


Parsimony

by RainbowSerenity



Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Angst, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, NaNoWriMo 2020, OR IS IT, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:34:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainbowSerenity/pseuds/RainbowSerenity
Summary: Hope Estheim goes to sleep one night while living in 10AF, confident that his team in the Academy has reached a breakthrough after finding an Oracle Drive.He wakes up the next morning....thirty-three years old and married to Lightning Farron in a new world.What is his life, seriously?
Relationships: Hope Estheim/Lightning
Comments: 158
Kudos: 149





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi :)
> 
> I wrote this for NaNoWriMo this year, and this is the first time I've EVER won it! kinda lame that it's not, y'know, an actual novel...but this is the first multi-chaptered fic I've written in literally over a decade, so I guess that's something to be proud about!
> 
> I'll be posting once a week til it's all up, just so I don't overwhelm everyone! I thrive on comments and feedback, but then again, who doesn't??
> 
> anyway please enjoy the thing that consumed my life for the first three weeks in November~

Something was wrong.

Hope couldn’t tell _how_ he knew this, exactly. It was just one of those weirdly vague feelings one got when instinct was stronger than anything. And of course, instinct would be much stronger when he was still half asleep.

But he got another sign something wasn’t quite right when an unfamiliar noise startled him out of his half-asleep state. At first he thought it was the signal that blared when a monster got too close, but this sound was different.

Still, it wasn’t enough to completely wake him up. He’d had a very long night planning the next move for his team. People often gave him a lot of leeway because of his father, but he’d been trying for years to prove he could hold his own and sometimes that meant a relatively sleepless night.

And he might have just kept on sleeping, weird noise be damned.

Until _someone else in the bed moved._

Hope’s eyes immediately flew open and he scrambled away from the other person with a yelp, but the bed was in a different direction than it was supposed to be. Therefore, he completely misjudged where he was going and tumbled out, his head thunking against the nightstand hard enough to make his vision blur for a second.

For a second, everything stopped – except that weird noise. Hope vaguely felt something wet on his forehead and realized he must be bleeding. Damn, he needed to get hold of a Potion or maybe a Remedy -

And then the other person in the bed, no doubt startled by all of his commotion, sat up and came into view and all thoughts flew from his throbbing head.

 _Lightning Farron_ was staring at him.

It was at that precise second he wondered if he was hallucinating, maybe from the lack of sleep.

Or maybe this was a dream, because he noticed a second later that she was wearing an _extremely_ low-cut tank top.

His mouth fell open for more reason than one. He made a croaking noise, staring at her like she was a ghost – which, in a way, she sort of was.

Right?

“Hope?” She frowned, her brows furrowed as she quickly got up and went to him, crouching down. It was at this precise moment that he realized that he was wearing nothing but some unfamiliar boxer shorts.

“I - ”

“That looks pretty bad. I think you might need stitches.” She was still frowning, but not because she looked confused about the fact that they were both in their underwear – because she was concerned. For _him._

His heart was pounding so loudly that he legitimately wondered if he was about to pass out. Between this and the blood loss, it was entirely plausible.

Also, _stitches?_ Shouldn’t she have gotten a Potion first? Most people kept at least a few around, especially these days.

Lightning, however, made no mention of it and got up. “Wait here.”

As if he could go anywhere with his head wound and no clothes. Of course it looked bad to show up to his team late, but surely they would understand something like this, especially since Lightning was here. _Lightning._

Had they been successful?

He couldn’t give that thought any more, well, thought, because the lights suddenly came on and Hope found himself staring at a completely unfamiliar room – and he meant _completely,_ because he had never seen some of this furniture in his life. Not just personally – he just had no idea things looked like that. Wood furniture? That would get destroyed by monsters in no time flat. Most things these days were made of titanium or steel so they could stand up to the elements.

Before he could say anything, Lightning was back and thrust something in his face. “Here.”

He stared, realizing they were clothes, but they were so… _plain._ Just black shirt and a pair of green sweatpants? What about his gloves and holster?

Lightning was giving him an odd look. He’d never seen that expression on her face before. Maybe that ruled this out as a dream then, because surely he couldn’t dream of something he’d never seen.

“Do you...” She hesitated for a second and then knelt down again. “Do you need help?”

Whatever miracle it was that she was here, Hope remembered that they were both still in their underwear and gasped, scrambling away – although it didn’t do him much good since the nightstand he’d cracked his head on was in the way. “N-No! No, I can do this!”

She tilted her head, obviously still confused, but simply slapped the clothes into his lap and stood back up. “I’ll get you a cloth for that. We’re going to the hospital. No arguing.”

Hospital? They were near one? Usually these days there was just a designated healer, or everyone just carried Potions with them. He couldn’t remember the last time someone actually went to a hospital.

Even though he was more confused than ever, Hope put on the clothes, trying not to aggravate his wound, and Lightning soon returned with a damp cloth. Luckily by now, she was wearing clothes – a simple oversized shirt and some capris.

He’d never seen her in clothes like that before.

Since he was too busy staring, she pressed the cloth to his head, then grabbed his hand and put his own on it. Her ease in doing so made him stare some more. Sure, they’d been close, and she had sometimes been affectionate with him, but…

“Keep the pressure on it.” She nodded in satisfaction when he did just that and, with the same ease, took his arm. “Don’t move your hand, okay? I’ll drive us, obviously.”

Drive? In what?

Though he didn’t voice his thoughts, Lightning was clearly expecting him to say _something_ and frowned a little when he didn’t. Instead, she led him to the door and through another room that looked completely unfamiliar. He couldn’t even pay attention anymore, not until he grasped what was going on.

Because _something_ clearly was.

Lightning grabbed what looked like a set of keys from a hook near the front door. She hurried them to a contraption that _looked_ a bit like a vehicle, maybe, but it lacked all the sleekness of anything he’d ever seen before.

Clearly Lightning didn’t understand, because when he stood there and stared at it, she just rolled her eyes a little. “I’m not taking your car. That thing’s a deathtrap.”

It was his turn to frown. “What?”

The concerned expression had momentarily disappeared from her face, but now it was back in full force. “Never mind. Come on.”

He hesitated before copying what she did and opened the door, sliding into a comfortable cloth seat. It was actually way more roomy in here than he’d expected – and apparently the seat belts went across your shoulder, as opposed to just on your lap. Even with his bleeding head, he knew that was much safer. Hmmm.

Lightning stuck the key in something behind the wheel and he jumped a bit as what he assumed was the ignition started up. He could _feel_ her give him a side-eye glance, but she didn’t say anything and just started moving the...car, was it?

Though it wasn’t nearly as fast as a train or a bike, the ride was smooth. He glanced out the window, frowning at the unfamiliar scenery. He’d never seen a place like this before! He was too much in awe to be surprised or scared, though perhaps the fact that Lightning was really _here_ made him feel a little calmer.

And then she dropped another bomb.

“Nora should be working today, right?”

Hope gasped and whipped his head around so fast that he bonked it against the headrest and nearly lost his grip on the cloth – which was still damp, but now with blood instead of water, ugh. “What?!”

Lightning glanced at him, that strange expression back on her face. “It...it’s Thursday, right? She usually has the morning shift.”

“Morning shift? You – you do mean _Nora?_ My _mom?!”_

“Yes…” Lightning’s voice trailed off and now she looked genuinely worried. “Look, don’t worry about it. We’ll get you fixed up.”

Hope slumped back in his seat with a nod. “Okay.”

No matter what was going on, he knew that he could _always_ trust Lightning.

–--

The hospital was none like he’d ever seen before – big, white, sterile, although something nagged at the back of his mind that he _had_ seen something like that before. Then again, that could’ve just been his head wound, which was starting to throb something fierce.

Weirdly, Lightning seemed to know where she was going and walked past several doors before leading him through a set of automatic ones. There was a big white desk with a sign that said ‘PLEASE SIGN IN’. But he barely noticed all of that, because sitting behind the desk, clearly writing something, was…

“Mom?!?”

Nora looked up and he knew if he was dreaming, he didn’t want to wake up. That was without a doubt his mom – she was _here_ and _alive_ and it didn’t make any sense that he was in the same room as her and Lightning, but all of a sudden he just wanted to sit down and cry in a way he hadn’t since he was a kid.

“Hope?” She sounded surprised, but not _shocked._ “What on earth happened?”

Lightning took his arm and led him to the desk. “He hit his head on the nightstand. I think it might need stitches.”

“Let me see.” Nora stood up and she was right _there, right_ in front of him. He didn’t know what to do or say, because he’d always imagined this moment of seeing his mother again but he wasn’t forced to hold a cloth to his bleeding forehead in his imagination.

Nora, however, didn’t seem to think anything was special about the moment. She moved the cloth, glancing at his wound with a practiced eye. He wanted to lean into her touch, he wanted to hug her, he wanted to _cry -_

“It must hurt if you’re tearing up,” she said with a little smile and gently patted his cheek. And yes, it did hurt, but why was she acting so normal? Why were she and Lightning here with him?

And then Lightning dropped yet another bomb.

“Is Vanille in?”

Hope sucked in such a sharp breath that some of the other people behind the desk looked at him in concern. He paid them no mind. “Vanille?!”

“Yes...” The worried look was back on her face and she exchanged a glance with Nora. “She is, right?”

“Yes.” Now Nora had the same worried expression, but she just bit her lip and typed something. “Exam room two. I’ll send her in.”

“Thank you.”

When Lightning pulled on his arm again, he almost stood right there and stopped her. Why would he want to leave this? Even if they were going to Vanille, this was his _mom._ He couldn’t leave her!

As though she knew what he was thinking, Nora smiled a little, though the concern didn’t leave her eyes. “I’ll pop in if I can. It should be slow enough.”

Lightning nodded in affirmation and Hope knew he couldn’t argue. He was led down a hallway into a room that was simply marked with the number 2. Everything in the room felt vaguely familiar and yet not.

There was a moment of silence, which Hope had to admit he was grateful for. His head was spinning – partially from the blood loss, he assumed – but none of this made any sense. If he wasn’t dreaming, what the heck was going on?

When he sat down on a raised table in the middle of the room, Lightning regarded him for a minute before she hummed in thought. “Hope, are you...”

Before she could finish, the door swung open and he wanted to cry for the third time that day.

“What a surprise!” Vanille sounded exactly the same, all cheerful with that usual accent. There was still a pep in her step that made the clothes she was wearing rustle in an odd way. “Never thought I’d see _you_ in here. Usually it’s Snow I’ve got!”

Snow was here, too?

“Hi Vanille.” Lightning greeted her like nothing was out of the ordinary. Well of, course – if she did that with his mom, why would Vanille be any different? “He hit his head on the nightstand. I think it needs stitches.”

“Hmm.” Vanille snapped on some gloves – weird, rubbery-looking ones – and gestured for him to move the cloth. She hissed in sympathy. “Good call, Lightning. He _definitely_ needs some fixing up.” She grinned at him. “But don’t worry, I gotcha!”

This was too much, He couldn’t wrap his head around any of this and he _had_ to know.

“Why don’t you just use a Potion?”

Both women froze. Vanille dropped the gauze she’d been holding, which fluttered to the floor without a sound.

What? What had he said?

It was Vanille who broke the silence. “A...Potion?”

“Yes,” he insisted. “If the wound’s that deep I should need two, but that’s not really that dangerous. Maybe a Remedy would work better.”

Lightning’s eyes had gotten huge. He’d only seen that wide-eyed look on her once in life, right before Alexander had come to him.

Only now instead of affection, they were filled with fear.

“Hope...” Vanille, for once, sounded like she had _no_ idea what to say. “There’s...there’s no – I don’t...”

“Hope,” Lightning echoed, sitting up a bit straighter like something had just occurred to her. “How old are you?”

“What?”

“Humor me.”

He frowned, wondering why his stomach suddenly knotted itself from nerves. “I’m twenty-four.”

Vanille gasped and put a hand over her mouth while Lightning groaned and her posture sagged as she buried her face in her hands. The nerves were dancing now, but he dared to continue when neither of them spoke.

“Light?” The nickname came so easily from his lips, like he’d said it a thousand times before, for years and years. “Why’d you ask? Is it because...”

“No,” she said, her voice muffled, but then she dropped her hands. She somehow looked both incredibly tired and scared at once. “But Hope you’re – you’re not twenty-four.”

“What?”

“You’re thirty-three years old.”

The words barely registered before his mind decided that was enough for today.

At least it was a short fall to the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

He was having a dream – a very nice dream, the sort he was always disappointed wasn’t real when he woke up.

“It sounds like he really needs one.” _Vanille._

“I know what you’re thinking, but the risk factor is pretty much negligible.” _Nora._

“I guess you’re right, especially since...well.” _Lightning._

At the sound of Lightning’s voice, Hope blinked his eyes open, surprised and disoriented. None of the whiteness looked familiar, but the face that suddenly appeared in his view very much did, even if he’d never expected to see it again anytime soon.

“Hope.” Lightning looked both concerned and relieved. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

“Hey,” another achingly familiar voice said teasingly. Was that really Vanille? “Who’s the nurse here?”

“Light?” Hope mumbled. He scrubbed a hand over his face and realized that he’d been put in a hospital bed, so he tried to sit up. Everything still felt weird and off-balance. “Is that really you...?”

She sighed a little and glanced at someone on the other side of the bed. “See what I mean?”

“Hope, honey.” Someone touched his arm and he felt a bit woozy again at the sight of his mother’s face – someone he’d _really_ never expected to see again, even if his research worked out. “How are you feeling?”

“Mom.” Now he scrambled to sit up, certain that he was dreaming even though all signs pointed to the fact that he was very much awake. “How are you here? How are _any_ of you here?!”

“Easy.” Nora gently pressed his shoulder and eased him back down on the bed, which Vanille was busy rearranging so that he could sit up instead of lay down flat. “One thing at a time.”

One thing? There were a million things!

But as he always advised his team, it was best to start with the easiest thing and work your way up. There was really nothing _easy_ here, but still...

“Did I faint?” Maybe that explained the wooziness.

“Yup,” Vanille answered, fluffing his pillow. He noticed that she wasn’t wearing any of the usual beaded accessories he’d come to associate with her, except for a necklace with what looked like a ring on it. “Gave us a scare, actually! Although that made it much easier to fix up your forehead.”

Hope instinctively reached up and felt something rough on his skin. Vanille slapped his hand away. “That’s right. I asked why you couldn’t use a...”

“...Potion,” Lightning finished when he trailed off. She hadn’t looked away from him once during all this, which should have been unnerving but perhaps even now, he was simply used to her watching his back.

In fact, that was all he’d wanted during the past ten years or so – someone to watch his back. Instead, everyone he’d ever known and loved had disappeared one by one.

And now the three he’d wanted back most of all were standing around him like nothing was wrong.

“Am I really thirty-three?” he blurted out.

Nora made a confused noise in her throat and glanced at Vanille, who shrugged with one shoulder. Lightning closed her eyes and let out a long, low breath, and it was her that answered. “Yes.”

That dizzying, swooping sensation came back, but luckily Hope didn’t feel like fainting again. Small victories, he supposed. But he just couldn’t wrap his head around it – this clearly wasn’t Pulse or even Cocoon, so how the hell had this happened?!

Of course, his instinct was that this was paradox. While he hadn’t experienced any yet himself – as far as he was aware – he remembered that several years ago, in his mind, anyway, a few of his team members had gone through one in the form of a giant invisible monster. Serah and someone she'd apparently been traveling with had come through a gate to defeat it, only to disappear soon after. His research indicated that she was due to appear at his team’s location any day now.

“Is Serah here?” he asked while he was in that train of though. “Not _here_ specifically, but - ”

“Yes,” Lightning said again. There was a weird lilt in her voice he couldn’t quite understand. “She’s here. Everyone is.”

“This has to be a paradox!”

Nora looked confused and Vanille frowned, but Lightning shook her head. “It’s not. Please trust me on that.”

Though – in his mind – he hadn’t seen Lightning for ten years, trusting her was completely instinctual. His lack of hesitation made him feel like he was a teenager again, but there was another feeling that tingled through him when it came to her, one he didn’t quite understand.

And of course at the moment, he was in no position to think about it. “But if it’s not a paradox, then what’s going on?” He ran a hand through his hair. “How could I go to sleep one night as a twenty-four year old and wake up as someone who’s thirty-three? In a place that’s _not_ Pulse or Cocoon?”

“We think there’s might be something wrong with your head.” Vanille was wringing her hands a little, like his questions had made her nervous. “I’d like to do an MRI and maybe a CAT scan.” She managed a little laugh. “Take a look inside that big brain of yours!”

Since he was only vaguely familiar with the terms – he’d heard them on Cocoon, but had no real idea what they meant – Hope, for some reason, found himself glancing at Lightning, as though she could tell him what to do.

He was completely unprepared for the look on her face. It was a sad, almost _defeated_ expression, which was something he’d never really associated with her. It was definitely not the look of a woman who claimed that ‘it’s not a question of can or can’t.’

In that expression, his decision was made for him.

“I...” He cleared his throat. “I’m going to have to say no.”

Was it his imagination or did Lightning look relieved?

Nora and Vanille were clearly not happy with his answer. “A ten-year memory loss is nothing to sneeze at!” Vanille cried. “Something like that could be an indication of something very serious.”

“And if there _is_ something wrong, it’s always better to try and catch it early,” Nora added.

“If it doesn’t get better, I’ll come back,” he said. “But I _did_ hit my head pretty hard.” He gestured to his forehead, conveniently not mentioning that his memory had been in shambles before he’d taken that bonk on the nightstand. “Perhaps I need to just...sleep it off or something.”

Lightning’s hand reached out and gently squeezed his shoulder. It was a strangely intimate touch, and he suddenly wondered at the nature of their relationship here, ten years later in this weird new world.

Vanille sighed heavily. “I suppose that’s possible. Most memory loss cases prove to be temporary.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced, but just inspected his forehead again. “Lightning, you still have my home number, right?”

“Of course.”

“Make sure you give me a call if you guys change your mind, all right?” She looked so weirdly serious that Hope felt himself nod automatically in agreement, and then she had that bright smile on her face again – the one he’d missed so dearly. “If that’s that then, let’s get you out of here, mister! I’m sure you’ll rest up much more easily at home.”

_Home._

He automatically glanced at his mom, but he wasn’t sure why considering that he, of course, hadn’t lived with her since he was a teenager. He didn’t really _have_ a set home lately; it was simply where his team needed to be and he set up a space where he needed.

Clearly things were different here.

To his continued surprise, it was Lightning who helped him up out of the bed and got him his shoes. “I’ll give you a call later. You too, Nora.”

“Please do,” Nora replied, still watching her son with a concerned eye as he and Lightning walked out of the room.

It felt so _wrong_ to leave his mother behind. In fact, it was actually making him feel a bit ill, since all he could think about was that moment so long ago at the Hanging Edge. As though she could sense this, Lightning looped her arm in his, sticking close by – another intimate gesture he couldn’t make sense of, but that he was definitely grateful for.

Neither of them said anything until they left the hospital and Hope was immediately greeted with the sun in his face. Hours must have passed, then, since it’d been barely light when they’d left. How long had his fainting spell lasted?

Ah well, no matter now, he supposed. He held up his hand, shielding his eyes from the sun, but in doing so suddenly noticed something glinting on his finger.

His left ring finger, to be exact.

Hope stopped short, holding his hand up and staring at it like it was a foreign object. And it really might as well have been too, considering he was ten years older and not on Pulse and also _married?!_

The gold band glinted in the sun, clearly mocking him. Lightning, who had been forced to stop when he did since their arms were still linked, stared him with a slight frown. “What is it?”

He could barely _think_ the word, never mind _say_ it. Though he was at just about the typical marrying age for someone in 10AF, he’d been so busy with his research that he’d never even entertained the idea. There’d only ever been one person he’d had his eyes on, anyway.

Wait a second...

“Are...” Hope sloooowly looked down, where Lightning’s left hand was in the crook of his elbow. It was positioned in a way where he could barely seen her ring finger, but the telltale glint was there.

“Are we _married?!”_

She stared at him in a truly amazing display of annoyance, fear, amazement, and confusion. It was really quite remarkable how she could express so much with just a glance – it was something he’d forgotten about her during the past ten years (that he recalled, anyway).

Finally, after a pause, she nodded and started walking to the – car? - again. “Yes,” she said. “We’ve been married for four years. Together about six.”

He thought about that as they slid inside the car, which held less wonder for him now that he had other things to think about...such as the fact that he was _married to Lightning._ He supposed it made sense considering they'd been in the same bed when he'd tumbled out of it, but it was still a lot to grasp. “How...I don’t...I mean, I’ve always – I just - ”

“We got together pretty soon after we came to this world.” She started up the car and quickly backed out the space, her eyes squarely on the road, although the got the sense she wanted to look at him instead. “I guess after everything that happened, we figured there was no sense in wasting time.”

“Everything that happened?”

Her hands briefly squeezed the steering wheel and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You said you were twenty-four. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was in the Yaschas Massif,” he replied immediately, as though it were yesterday...which of course, for him, it _had_ been. “My team and I discovered some artefacts from the Farseer’s tribe and had set up a location to find some more. I remember I found one near the gate Serah was supposed to reappear from.”

Lightning was quiet for a moment as the world sped by. “...Was this during an eclipse, by any chance?”

“Yes,” he said, obviously surprised. “How did - ?”

She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment as the car stopped at a red light. He wanted to ask, to _know_ – knowledge was what he was best at – but stopped himself when he noticed the slump in her shoulders. All of a sudden, it hit him that as hard as this was for him, with what the ten-year memory gap, it was probably just as hard, if not moreso, for her. He’d forgotten their entire relationship and marriage – _marriage!_ \- and was basically a stranger in this new world that was so far from Pulse and Cocoon. It had to be jarring to go to bed next to your husband one night and wake up to essentially a different person the next day.

When the car started up again, he let out a long breath, needing to know more but now wanting to choose his questions a little more carefully. It was somehow easier to think when she couldn’t look at him.

“You said that everyone was here, correct?”

She relaxed ever-so-slightly. “Yes.”

“What are they all up to? Besides Vanille and my mom, of course, although of course I wasn’t exactly expecting to see them there...”

Lightning merely hummed in acknowledgment at that particular elephant in the room, but went on to explain in a matter-of-fact tone that felt familiar. “Vanille’s a nurse. Nora works part-time at the hospital at the front desk.”

Hope couldn’t help but remember his childhood, where they’d been extremely well-off and his mother had basically just kept the household running. “Is my dad...?”

“He’s alive,” she said, and he let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “He’s part-time too, partially retired. Bartholomew, he...” She gave him another side glance. “He works with you, as a researcher. They live in the same neighborhood as we do.”

It made sense that he would’ve kept the same line of work, but it was strange to think that he _could_ research anything here, especially if Cocoon wasn’t in the sky. But he didn’t want to think about that right now – giving any thought to his _marriage_ with Lightning needed to wait. He needed to hear about the others first.

“What about Fang?”

“She and Vanille are together.”

“Of course.”

That got him a little smile. “Fang’s a lawyer.”

And _that_ made his eyes bug out. “A _what?”_ They’d had lawyers on Cocoon, stepping in for the human affairs fal’cie hadn’t really cared about, but he never would have imagined Fang in that sort of profession. Then again...

“She’s very good at arguing,” Lightning pointed out.

“That’s true, from what I remember back then. Even so...” He shook his head in wonder. “What about Snow and Serah?”

“They live nearby, actually. Serah’s a teacher.”

“At least _that_ hasn’t changed.” Hope remembered visiting Bodhum shortly before Serah had disappeared and watching her hold a class right on the beach. Meanie Miss Farron. “What about Snow?”

Snow, as it turned out, worked at a different school as a sports coach. Sazh and Dajh lived in the city and he was still a pilot – just of airplanes, which were similar to airships except different. The NORA gang was scattered around nearby as well, although Lightning pointed out they were mostly Snow and Serah’s friends, so they didn’t cross paths much, which was a bit of a relief.

“Noel and Yeul live way on the outskirts of town. Noel’s a - ”

“Who’s Noel?”

Lightning immediately fell quiet and then sighed, so softly he almost didn’t hear it from the roar of the car. “He’s...someone you met later on.” She seemed to choose her words carefully. “But we’re all friends now.”

He had a feeling it had to do with the ‘everything’ that had happened that he no longer remembered. “Oh.” He paused. “The name Yeul sounds familiar, though.”

“She was a seeress in the old world,” Lightning explained. “I think at that point you came across her name in some of your research.”

“Yes!” He suddenly felt excited, like he did when he found something, anything connected to a way he could help his friends. “The Seeress, Paddra-Nsu Yeul. She was always reincarnated within the Farseer’s tribe, or so we’ve found.”

Lightning made a noise like she wanted to say something, but suddenly turned the car into the driveway of a modest-size house and turned off the engine. She sat there for a second before unbuckling her seatbelt. “We’re home.”

“Oh.” He did the same and they got out of the car, heading to the front door. Hope had no idea what to make of the house – it was nice, but it didn’t feel like he’d come _home._

He stood in the doorway after Lightning had opened the door, staring at everything he hadn’t been able to that morning due to his ridiculous head wound. There were bookshelves stuffed with books and trinkets, photos on the wall, and comfortable-looking furniture in front of a modest television. It didn’t look anything like his childhood house, but it still looked homey and inviting.

But it wasn’t _his_ home.

“Is it okay if I take a look around?” he suddenly asked, feeling more like a stranger than he had since waking up.

She nodded. “Of course. I have some things I need to take care of. Just call me if you have any questions.”

He nodded back, wondering if she was making a joke since he was nothing _but_ questions. Vaguely, he wondered if she thought looking around the house would jog his memory, but Hope wasn’t so sure. After all, Lightning – and Vanille and Nora, for that matter – were so sure this was just a memory issue, but he couldn’t help but feel like it was a paradox. There was some dangerous stuff his team had been researching, so it would make sense if he got caught up in something.

Instead of voicing any of these concerns, however, he took a tentative step into the living room.

His eyes were immediately glued to the aforementioned bookshelves and he read through the titles on the spines, not recognizing any of them. A couple were thick volumes that were clearly textbooks and it suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea if they were his or Lightning’s. She’d talked about everyone else – including people he didn’t know – but she hadn’t mentioned what _she_ was up to in this new world.

Deciding to open that can of worms later, Hope continued to poke around, and after pulling out some of the more interesting-looking novels and setting them in a pile on the coffee table, noticed with some surprise that there was a photo album on the bottom shelf. He quickly grabbed it and set it on the coffee table in the room without opening it. Photo albums were basically non-existent in his universe and had been fairly rare back on Cocoon. Most people kept their photos in digital files or framed them if they’d been professionally taken. He highly doubted there was an entire _album_ of professional photos here.

But he had to save it for later. For now, he continued his exploration, feeling a weird sense of disconnect. It just felt so _weird_ that he would have a home, such a nice one at that, when he’d basically been living in makeshift shelters since the Fall. Sure, over the past decade people had begun to settle and establish communities, but the homes were fairly small and simple.

Not like _this._

He wandered into the kitchen, where the first thing he saw was a big silver fridge covered in papers held up by magnets. His eyes wandered over them, even though he could hardly make sense of any of it. A letter to Ms. Farron-Estheim thanking her for a donation to a fundraiser. Something that looked like a receipt for a plumber. A couple of photographs of dogs. A ripped-up scrap of paper with the words ‘Doctor for F’ and some random numbers that meant nothing to him scribbled below it. A drawing done in what looked like crayon of a rainbow over something that vaguely resembled a horse, with ‘Rosa V’ scrawled at the bottom in an obviously child’s handwriting.

Off the kitchen was a room he didn’t quite recognize the use for, but had several boxes labeled with ‘HOLIDAY’ stacked in a corner, along with random other boxes of stuff and a tub of plastic bottles. A washer and dryer were against one wall – machines he hadn’t seen since living on Cocoon.

The backyard was just a yard, no patio or anything, but it reminded him a little of the arrangement in front of his childhood home – there were a few rosebushes (of course) and deep green grass that was just slightly overgrown.

When he wandered back through the living room, he took a moment to actually look at the various photos on the walls. Several of them were of Snow and Serah and a little blonde girl – their daughter? Lightning hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort.

Then again, today wasn’t exactly _normal._

One photo made him literally stop short. It was a little bigger, showing Lightning in a strapless white gown with a long veil hanging behind her. Hope – wearing a tuxedo in the picture – had his arms around her in what looked like a bone-crushing hug, but clearly it didn’t matter because the smiles on their faces and light in their eyes said it all.

Somehow, he was able to tear his eyes away long enough to glance down at his wedding ring, his heart thudding wildly.

It was no secret in his mind that he’d had feelings for Lightning since they were l’cie. At first it’d been admiration, familial, sweet – everything he’d needed from a companion after losing his mother and essentially his freedom.

But somewhere along the line, that admiration had morphed into something deeper, something that claimed his heart, especially when he thought of her helping to hold up Cocoon. Of course, he’d never been entirely sure she _was_ in the pillar, but his feelings grew nonetheless. All the time he’d been conducting his research, he’d had absolutely no idea when or if he would see her again.

And now here he was in a life that he had no recollection of, _married_ to the woman he’d literally had dreams about while sleeping on a cot surrounded by his colleagues.

It didn’t feel real. None of this felt quite real, honestly. Did a paradox feel like this, like he was disconnected from himself? It was almost as though someone had taken his soul from his usual time and stuck it in this body in this weird new world.

Hope abruptly shook his head. While he truly didn’t think this was simply memory loss, he knew that thinking about it too much while there was presumably nothing he could do was useless. Dwelling on things was a waste of time.

He let out a breath and managed to tear his eyes from the photo, heading down the hallway instead. There were some sliding doors in one wall that, upon opening them, appeared to be a closet for jackets and shoes. Some heavy-looking blankets were also neatly folded and placed on a high shelf. He wondered if Lightning had folded them, since he’d never been _quite_ so meticulous about something like that.

It was nice to take a look around the bedroom a minute later without trying to see through a haze of blood. But as he took it all in, there was a weird fluttering in his stomach that he couldn’t quite figure out.

One one nightstand – the one he’d bonked his head against – there was a lamp and a thick book with a title he didn’t recognize, held in place with what looked like scrap paper. Shoved into one corner was another framed photo, this time of his parents, Lightning, and himself all dressed in formal clothing. He stared at that one in wonder, marveling at the idea as it hit him, _really_ hit him, that both of his parents and Lightning were all alive in the same time and place.

He managed to tear his eyes away and glanced at the other nightstand, which had to be Lightning’s side. There was another lamp and a few books haphazardly stacked on top of each other, along with a notepad and a couple of pens. It was a surprisingly messy display, which was weird since Lightning had always struck him as a bit of a neatnick.

Then again, what did he know? Not a damn thing, apparently.

The bed itself was big, the covers all mussed up. He wondered if Lightning was the sort of person to make the bed and simply hadn’t with all the confusion of today. There were some more photos on the walls he forced himself not to look at, but also a huge painting of what looked like a strange metal tower that was made to appear as though it were glowing against the night sky.

He wondered which of them had put that painting up. The way their lives had obviously merged here, in their house that they had _together_ was both intriguing and terrifying. Hope had lost so many people in such a short time that the idea of making himself vulnerable to open his life with another person felt almost wrong.

Then again, if he was going to let anyone have his heart, it would definitely be Lightning.

He meandered into the master bathroom and did a double take at the hodgepodge of stuff on the counter. For some reason, he’d been expecting a clear separation of his and hers, but that wasn’t the case. There were two toothbrushes in a single cup, one tube of toothpaste, one bottle of lotion. He opened one of the drawers and saw some makeup tossed in with some dental floss and a men’s razor. One look behind the shower curtain showed him a single bottle of body wash and a few different shampoos.

It was all evidence of two lives hopelessly intertwined. There was no easy way to completely pick one from the other.

His stomach fluttered some more as he quickly walked out of the master bath and bedroom. The idea that this was all paradox seemed more and more likely to him, because what else could it be? What else would let him have this?

That thought plagued his mind as he poked his head into a nondescript guest bathroom and then into a room that didn't look like it was used for anything specific. He paused in the doorway and frowned at the state of it – a huge bookcase was shoved against the far wall, while a bunch of boxes were stacked up next to it, like they hadn’t gotten around to completely setting things up. There was a very temporary-looking desk against the opposite wall, where Lightning was sitting in a battered-looking chair, typing something on sleek-looking machine with quick, deft fingers.

How strange. Clearly they’d lived in this house for awhile, so why was this room in such a half-finished state?

Hope stood there in the doorway, feeling utterly overwhelmed by...well, just about everything that had happened since waking up. Evidently he made a sound, because Lightning was alerted to his presence and glanced at him, her expression hesitant but still much softer than he ever remembered.

“Hey.”

“Uh...hey,” he echoed, running a hand through his hair. She was looking at him expectantly so he continued, “What are you doing?”

“Just catching up on some work.” At his confused sound, she added, “That’s right, I never mentioned it, but I work for a nonprofit that helps abuse victims.”

He blinked in surprise. Perhaps it was because he was so used to her brandishing a sword and destroying enemies in her path, but he never would have guessed she was doing something so...ordinary. There had been charities on Cocoon, of course, but considering his privileged upbringing, he’d never given much thought to them.

“Oh,” he finally said. “Do you like it?”

“I do,” she replied easily. “It lets me work from home three days a week, which is nice. I also taught an aerobics class up until about three months ago.”

 _That_ he could picture a little more easily, if just because it involved more than sitting at a desk. He smiled a little. “That sounds a little more your style.”

“Yeah.” Was it his imagination or did she sound almost wistful? “It was.”

“How come you stopped doing it?”

He could sense the tension in the air almost immediately and blamed his big mouth. Clearly this was something between her and the Rightful Hope of This Time and Place.

But since she believed he was still the same, she sighed a little and gave him an answer. “There were other things on my mind. No big deal.”

It _was_ a big deal, for whatever reason, but he knew he had no right to get into it or probe her further. It hit him, _really_ hit him for what felt like the billionth time that day that this wasn’t his life and there was nothing he had done to earn it. In his mind, he was still just a researcher trying to find his friends and make up for the sins he had committed as a l’cie. There was no way he could just pretend things were okay and simply try to pick up this life like it would jog memories he knew he didn’t have, especially since the last time he’d spoken to Lightning in person, he’d been fourteen and ready to sacrifice himself for the world.

He couldn’t do this.

There must have been something on his face that gave away what was going on in his head, because Lightning suddenly stood up and took his hand. “Hope? What is it?”

He sighed heavily, somewhat in awe at the ease of how their hands fit. When was the first time they had held hands romantically?

“You...you said my parents live nearby, right?”

“Yes...”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I need to go stay with them.”

She took a little step back, her eyes wide with confusion and _hurt._ He knew that in this or any life or world he would never, ever, want to hurt her, but this was too much.

“I...I guess I could drive you over,” she finally said after a long pause. “Are you sure?”

“It’s not you, Light.” The nickname still came so easily. “I’m just...really overwhelmed right now and in my eyes, I never expected to see my mom again. I was always looking for _you_ , but - ”

“I know.” She sighed, the breath seeming to come from so deep within her, another time and place. “Do you want to go now?”

“If you’re not busy.”

She winced, and he realized it sounded like that he was way too eager to get out of here, but she left the room before he could apologize or amend himself. Instead, he followed her down the hall, where she was at the front door putting her shoes on. He eyed the photo album and pile of novels he’d pulled from the bookshelf earlier and picked it up.

“Is it okay if I take these with me?”

“Of course.” She eyed the album, her gaze drifting up to his face. “Everything here is yours, too.”

He didn’t really have an answer for that and simply clutched the album and books to his chest, the two of them getting into the car. The drive over was in a strangely stony and yet contemplative silence.

It wasn’t as though he wanted to get away from _her._ Never. Hope just wanted to briefly escape the overwhelming feeling that he was in a different universe that he’d done nothing to deserve, the idea that this was a paradox, and his guilt at the fact that this was happening at all.

Maybe, in the back of her mind, Lightning would understand that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the kind comments on the first chapter! I'm excited to see everyone's theories and what you all notice :D


	3. Chapter 3

“Dad?”

“Hello, son.”

Hope hadn’t expected to feel very emotional at seeing his dad here in this world. After all, they’d had some good years together after the Fall, where they'd really grown to understand each other. It was because of Bartholomew that the Academy had gotten as far as it had so far.

But in his world, his father had passed away just a few days shy of his twenty-first birthday. To see him here now, alive and well, added to his scrambled mind and all the insane revelations of the day. Therefore, it was no wonder his eyes teared up a bit.

They hugged, Hope holding on a little more tightly than he meant to. When they finally let go, he looked around, somewhat disappointed that the place didn’t seem more familiar. It wasn’t like he’d been expecting a total recreation of his home in Palumpolum, but it made him feel more lost than he cared to admit that _nothing_ in his surroundings felt familiar.

“Your mother called and told me what happened.” Bartholomew led Hope to a couch and they sat down, the older man’s face creased in concerned.

Well, it was creased regardless. Even Nora had had some lines around her eyes he hadn’t remembered. Seeing the passage of time evident physically was just _odd_ and Hope suddenly wondered if he looked different. He’d been too busy to observe himself in a mirror.

“Yeah,” he finally said, staring down at his hands, his eyes flicking towards his wedding ring. Wearing it felt both normal and strange. No matter what his feelings for Lightning, the fact that he was _married_ to her still didn’t quite compute. “Do you remember when you founded the Academy and we started finding out information about paradoxes?”

Bartholomew frowned. “I...suppose so,” he replied slowly. “I don’t give much thought to that life anymore.”

“That _is_ my life, Dad. I really don’t think this is memory loss. Lightning and Mom and Vanille say it is, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t. In your mind, you come from a world where there's no real law of parsimony - the most outrageous makes more sense than the simplest explanation,” Bartholomew pointed out. “But that’s not the case here anymore.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“And Nora also told me that you refused to get your head checked out?”

Hope sighed heavily, looking at anything but his dad. There was a framed painting of a beach on the wall. He wondered which of his parents had put it there. Considering the only beach vacation he and his mom had ever taken ended with the Purge, it wasn’t as though such a location exactly held the fondest memories.

Then again, as it was proved over and over again, nobody here seemed to give a damn about the past.

“I don’t think Lightning wanted me to do it,” he finally said. “And I guess I’m just so used to someone using a Potion. I don’t even remember going to a hospital except after that field trip I took as a child.”

“That’s right,” Bartholomew said after a pause. “I’d forgotten all about that.” He glanced at his son. “But a fever is hardly comparable to such severe memory loss.”

“I know,” Hope said. “I think...I just need some time to think about things. I don’t even know anything about this world or how we got here. Some things look familiar, but for the most part I’m just trying to put the pieces together in my head.” Before he could stop himself, he found himself adding, “Plus, the fact that I actually married _Lightning_ is why this feels like a paradox.”

Bartholomew smirked a little. “You had a similar train of thought when she accepted your proposal. It was obvious that she _would,_ of course, but you don’t seem to have an ounce of logic when it comes to that woman.”

Hope actually felt his cheeks heat with a blush. While Bartholomew of course knew Lightning from back when they’d been l’cie, this was totally new territory for him and his dad. They’d never had a spare minute to discuss something as mundane as his love life when they’d been trying to establish the Academy, and Hope had been much more likely to tell his mother than his dad about any of his schoolboy crushes. Would the weirdness never end? “And...you’re okay with that? I mean, you approve of her, right?”

“Of course,” his dad replied instantly. “Nora and I knew that you would always choose to be with her. Claire has been a wonderful addition to the family.”

The use of Lightning’s given name, said so casually, made Hope pause. His head was spinning. It hit him yet again just how much he was missing in these ten years – and for some reason, it felt like it should have been a _much_ larger gap than that. In what world where, in just a decade, he could have his parents back, be in a peaceful new world, have all of his friends nearby, and be married to the only woman he’d ever had any real feelings for?

 _This_ was why he was so convinced all of this had to be a paradox. Nothing made sense otherwise. Did this world even have a place for him, especially the way he was now?

But he didn’t voice any of this out loud. Instead he sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. “Hey, since I’m here, do you think you could explain some of the things here in this world that weren’t on Pulse or Cocoon? Lightning drove me to the hospital in something called a car, when there should’ve been a train or one of those hoverbikes...”

Bartholomew looked surprised, but then nodded with a hesitant little smile. “I’d be happy to.”

–--

Hope barely slept that night. There was a laundry list of reasons why – the fact that he was thirty-three and married to Lightning Farron was clearly at the top. The wound on his forehead had started to throb, so that wasn’t helping either. Maybe it was because his head felt full to bursting with everything his dad – and his mom, when she’d gotten home from work - had shown him and told him about. A lot of things here were indeed similar to his privileged life on Cocoon, but also different. The technology was there, but it was just strange enough that a lot of it wasn’t intuitive for him, which was incredibly frustrating.

Perhaps the weirdest thing was that this world was so _peaceful._ He was so used to monsters and the dangers and struggles on Pulse that it was jarring to think that he simply didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

On Cocoon, people got around on trains, personal hoverbikes, airships, or simply walking. On Pulse, you rode chocobos or walked. What the heck was this world, where they had cars and planes and who knew what else? How did they get to use machines more for fun and not work? How was a _phone_ smaller and yet more powerful than a computer?

And if all of that wasn’t enough, he’d finally taken a good look at himself in the mirror before he hopped in the shower before bed.

Back after the fall, around the time he’d turned sixteen, he'd often had adults thinking he was much older than he was or saying that he looked ‘like a man.’ He’d never really thought much of those comments and figured a lot of it had to do with how fast he was forced to grow up. Even as he entered his twenties, he knew he looked older, but not _that_ much – maybe he simply hadn't seen what everyone else did.

Now he did.

He was still lean, but his shoulders were more broad and his arms were a bit more muscular. It made him wonder if he’d joined Lightning’s aerobics class back when she’d been teaching it. His jawline was much sharper, with a slight hint of a five o’clock shadow. There were faint lines on his forehead that were mostly visible in the right light, and tiny lines around his eyes that were more pronounced when he squinted. Luckily, he still had his freckles.

When he’d taken off his shirt before hopping in the shower, he’d been surprised to see an extremely faint scar in the center of his chest, only noticeable because it was lighter than his skin. Since there weren’t any monsters in this world, where on earth had it come from? Maybe he’d had some kind of surgery or something.

His parents had given him a lot of answers about how this world worked, but there were still so many questions. Too many. It was no wonder he couldn’t shut his brain up.

So when he woke up far more exhausted than he had been the night before, it didn’t really surprise him. He was only annoyed when he realized that he had no idea what do with himself when he woke up to an empty house. There was a note on the counter from his mother, saying she had to cover a shift and would be back as soon as possible. Vaguely, he recalled that his dad worked at the same research facility he himself did and wondered if Bartholomew was there making up some kind of excuse.

In the meantime, Hope had no real way to entertain himself. The television was off-limits since none of it would be familiar anyway, and his parents’ bookshelves were mostly filled with non-fiction, medical journals, and self-help books.

He suddenly remembered the books he’d taken from Lightning’s house – their house, he belatedly thought. The photo album was on the bottom, but he didn’t really want to get into it, literally and figuratively. Not yet.

With a bit of wonder, since books had been fairly scarce on Pulse, Hope picked up the novel on top of the pile and flipped the pages a bit before he began to read.

–--

He’d finished the first novel, one with a science fiction plot – and strangely, he had no idea if it was his or Lightning’s – and had just picked the sequel up when the front door opened and there stood his mom. It was incredible that he lived in a world where she was just _there._

“Hey, mom.” Hope set the book down and got up to greet her, but then froze in his tracks.

Because Lightning walked in right behind Nora.

It was equally amazing, even more so, that Lightning existed in this universe with him and they could stand here in the same room, staring at each other awkwardly until Nora cleared her throat. Ahem.

Lightning suddenly ducked her head a bit and walked into the house, carrying a small duffel bag with her. “Hey,” she said, not quite looking at him as she handed him the bag. “I brought you some of your stuff.”

Considering he had no real attachment to anything in this world, he hadn’t even been aware that he _could_ be missing anything. Apparently Lightning knew what was essential for him now.

Then again, hadn’t she always known?

Hope unzipped the bag and saw some clothes, a pillow, and another book. Tucked away in between a shirt and the pillow was a small rectangle with a clear screen. He pulled it out, remembering some of the stuff his dad had told him about – he was holding this world’s version of a phone, a device so powerful that some people barely used them for communicating.

“I didn’t know if you’d need that,” Lightning said. “Back...then, your communicators were pretty simple, right?”

“Yes.” He turned it over, staring at what was apparently a case. His had some kind of galaxy design. “They just did voice, for the most part.”

“These are a little more complicated. Here.” She gestured for him to hand it over, which he did, and she pushed a button on the front that turned the screen on. A bunch of square symbols appeared, none that he recognized. “You can send me a text here. Just words.”

Hope wondered if there was any universe out there where he _wouldn’t_ want to hear Lightning’s voice, but he didn’t say as much. It felt like they were walking on a thin line, somehow, and one wrong question would spin everything upside down again.

Not that things weren’t _already_ crazy, given the circumstances.

“I think I got it,” he said, just as the screen went black. Lightning pushed the button on the front again, and this time there was a keypad on the screen.

“Oh,” she murmured. “I don’t suppose you remember your password? The phone locks sometimes, just as a security measure.”

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

She toyed with the phone for a minute, turning it over and over in her hands, before giving it back to him. “It’s 0525.”

Something about the numbers tugged back into his head – _way_ back – and as he inputted them and the screen came back, he suddenly felt like he might faint again.

“Isn’t that your birthday?”

Lightning finally met his eyes at that, her own a bit wary but also hopeful. “Yes.” She nodded. “Probably a little obvious in hindsight.”

“Using mine would be way more obvious.” It was he could do to keep the conversation going and not completely freak.

He had never learned Lightning’s birthday in his past. It had never exactly been relevant information, with what being on the run.

Which meant he had learned it _here,_ in this time, despite the fact that he was so, so sure that he was living the reality of a completely different self. A paradox would always be the most likely explanation, at least to him.

And yet...

“Hope, sweetie? Is everything all right?”

He jumped a little at the sound of his mother’s voice. She’d emerged from presumably her room since she’d changed out of her work clothes and was now staring at her son in concern.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Light was just showing me the phone.” He lifted it up, kind of wiggling it around a bit. “Definitely different than what I’m used to.”

“Those phones on Cocoon were ridiculous,” Nora said. “I remember the line was always getting jammed unless you paid a premium for the best service.” She laughed quietly. “I certainly don’t miss that!”

Hope relaxed a bit, Nora’s comments reminding him of why he was here with his parents. Of course she and his dad were comfortable in this world and had been living in it, but it was also nice to be around someone who didn’t have so many memories that didn’t match up. He still had no idea what had happened with he and Lightning to lead them here and he wondered, at this point, if he even _wanted_ to find out. Wasn’t his head scrambled enough?

“Anyway, Claire, dear, did you want to stay for lunch?” Nora asked. “I didn’t get a chance to eat before my shift ended.”

“That’s...all right.” Lightning slid her eyes to Hope. It was both terrifying and a relief that she seemed to be able to read his moods so easily. While the urge to be around her was ridiculously strong – as it always had been – he wanted to stay in his protective bubble with his parents for just a little while longer. Maybe if he could truly calm down, he could start to try and figure stuff out.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Lightning replied. “I should go home and get back to work, anyway. I’m a little behind.”

Hope shifted his weight guiltily, knowing that the reason was likely because of him, though whether it was from dealing with the memory loss, his forehead wound, or both, he didn’t know. But either way, he knew it was his fault, and it brought back those feelings he’d had as a kid of wanting to impress her and look out for her.

Again, she seemed to read his mood so easily and flicked his forehead, a gesture so familiar that he suddenly felt like crying. “Don’t worry about it. Just keep your phone on you now that you have it. I’ll...text you. Okay?”

“Okay,” he replied, his voice thick with emotion. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nora smile a bit and disappear into the kitchen. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Some of the communicators at the Academy had a text function. It wasn’t quite this sophisticated, though.”

“I’m sure.” She paused, looking incredibly hesitant about something. It was weird to see her looking so unsure. “I’m sorry, but can I...do you mind if I...”

He had no idea what was she was talking about, but Hope knew he could never deny Lightning anything, in this or any other world. “Oh. Um. Sure...?”

Before he’d fully gotten the word out, Lightning flung her arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug. It was extremely reminiscent of the one she’d given him when he was kid, after admitting Operation Nora’s failure, only this time, it was _her_ face in his neck. She held him tightly, her nose brushing against his skin that made his heart thud for more reasons than one.

Almost a full minute passed before he finally had the sense to hug her back, though his was much more unsure. Sure, they were _married_ and all, but he didn’t know anything about their boundaries or how they touched each other. Marriage didn’t mean they automatically consented to everything, after all.

She sighed, her breath tickling his skin and hair, and slowly stepped out of the embrace. “Sorry,” she murmured. “It was just...weird, last night, not having you next to me.”

“Oh.” Hope didn’t know what to say to that except, “I’m sorry.” And suddenly, he truly was in a way that brought on the guilt. “And I’m sorry, too, that I’m not him. Your Hope, I mean.”

She frowned. “You _are_ my Hope. Whatever happens, that will never change. We’ll get your memories back somehow, all right?”

If only it were that easy, especially since he was sure this was a paradox. But things had always felt a little more manageable with Lightning on his side. Her ‘it’s not a question of can or can’t’ mantra had gotten him through some of his toughest years at the Academy.

 _That_ was something he would never forget.

“Okay,” he agreed, because what else could he do?

His heart twisted a little when Lightning turned and left, and he almost wanted to go back with her. This life seemed amazing, completely ideal to everything he could have ever dreamed of.

Now he just had to remember if it was his or if he even deserved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shhhhhhhhh let's just pretend that Cocoon/Pulse and the new world have the exact same calendar months/days lolol
> 
> and it's actually canon that Hope 'looked like a man' at 16 :D it's in one of the novels and of course it fills me with glee
> 
> also also you're all the best for the comments and whatnot! every time I see one in my inbox, it makes me smile so big :') thank you so much for all the support so far!


	4. Chapter 4

“So,” Nora said in a voice that suggested Hope wasn’t going to like her question. “Did you and Claire talk?”

Bartholomew raised his eyebrows as he poured himself a glass of water. “Claire was here?”

It was so _weird_ hearing his parents use her real name so casually. To him, she’d only ever been Light. “Yeah,” he said, sighing heavily and shaking his head at the offer of more pasta. His mom had made a dinner that he’d always loved, although he couldn’t quite remember if he’d loved it back in his old life or if his taste buds in this universe were just used to it.

But whatever, it was _delicious._ And sitting down to dinner with _both_ of his parents was something he hadn’t experienced much of a kid, due to his dad’s work schedule and his tendency to work late.

He’d forgotten, however, that dinner meant dinner _conversations._

“She came by when my shift at the hospital ended,” Nora said. “She wanted to drop some things off for Hope, but...”

“I see.” Bartholomew glanced at his son for a moment. “So did you two indeed talk?”

“Kind of.” Hope felt a bit like he was a kid again. “It’s just...complicated.”

His parents glanced at each other before Bartholomew asked, “Is it really?”

“Of course it is.” How was it _not?!_ “I don’t have any memories of anything after I was working with the Academy and I don’t know anything about this world. I can barely wrap my head around the fact that I’m actually _married_ to someone I’ve admired since I was fourteen.”

Nora kind of smiled a bit sadly, unperturbed that Hope’s voice had grown a little louder as he spoke. Her answer was simple. “She misses you.”

He sighed heavily again, putting his fork down. “Yeah, I know.” That hug earlier had proved it. And he missed her too, but mostly in the sense that his twenty-four year old mind did, where he would’ve done anything to know the was alive. Since she obviously was in this world, that gave him the space to attempt to sort out his thoughts.

Not that _that_ was going particularly well.

Hope stared at his plate for a moment and then looked up at his parents. “What would you guys do if you were me?”

They glanced at each other again, quiet as they seriously considered the question. It was Bartholomew who answered, “Honestly? I would go home.”

“It’s not that we don’t love having you here,” Nora added. “We always do. But you’re not going to find any answers just hiding with your parents.”

“I haven’t thought of the old world in years, but I recall you telling me many times that the answers wouldn’t come simply by waiting,” his dad said. “There was something you’d say a lot when you felt discouraged.”

“It’s not a question of can or can’t,” Hope said automatically. He knew they were right. Plus, Lightning’s mantra had yet to fail him, so they were good words to live by.

But at the same time...

“Hope?”

“It doesn’t feel like this is _my_ marriage, though,” he continued. “It’s like it was some other Hope from a paradox or another timeline that got here and now he gets to have this life. And I _don’t.”_

“I disagree,” Bartholomew said firmly. “This may be a new world and we may not have Cocoon or the Academy or anything like that here, but you are still our son. The things that make you who you are haven’t changed much in the past ten years, never mind from one world to another.”

“That’s right,” Nora agreed. “And you’ve shown over and over that you make each other happy. We don’t want you to deny yourself of that.”

“I don’t want to either,” Hope admitted. “But what happened with my memories, or this paradox...it’s a big deal. If I don’t feel like the right person who’s supposed to be here, am I just supposed to live with that?”

“It’s likely just your memories,” Nora said. “If worst comes to worst and you never get them back, you’ll just get to fall for her all over again.”

Hope huffed a little. “I’ve had feelings for her practically since we met,” he said. “But this whole marriage thing, it just…” He picked up his fork and then set it down again, suddenly feeling weirdly restless. “It just doesn’t feel like I deserve it, that’s all.”

“You do,” his parents said in unison, and then Nora reached out and patted his arm. “Why don’t you go rest and think on it for awhile? I’ll save your plate in case you get hungry later.”

“Okay.” Hope really wasn’t sure how much his thoughts would help, although clearly talking about it wasn’t doing much good.

Maybe he was just talking to the wrong person.

When he flopped on the bed of the guest room, he simply stared at the ceiling for a long while, listening the sounds of his parents finishing dinner and then cleaning up. It felt homey and familiar in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Vaguely, he wondered what Lightning had had for dinner.

Suddenly, he remembered the phone she’d brought to him earlier and found it in the bag she’d brought over. He powered it on, tapping the button on the front like she’d showed him, and entered that code – 0525.

The familiarity of Lightning’s birth date still made no sense.

He ignored that and watched as the icons filled the screen. Luckily there were captions explaining them, although a lot of them confused him. What the heck was an Instagram? A Flappy Bird?

Instead of investigating, he went to the messenger Lightning had showed him, evident by a speech bubble symbol. When he tapped on it, a bunch of message threads showed up. A lot of the names were familiar – his parents, Vanille, Fang, Snow, Serah, Sazh. There were some very old messages from Maqui and a thread from that guy Lightning had mentioned, Noel. Sprinkled throughout were some completely unfamiliar names, and a quick glance showed him they were likely coworkers.

But he wasn’t really interested in that at the moment. He paused, thumb hesitating over Lightning’s thread, before he finally closed his eyes and tapped it.

Nothing dramatic happened, of course. It was just words on a screen. He scrolled through the conversations, fascinated at how her personality came out through some simple texts. Was this easier for her than talking on the phone?

He paused his scrolling at a message from about two weeks ago, wondering if it would give him some kind of clue as to the life his other self was living here.

 _Light: I just got a memo that the fundraiser’s a formal occasion  
_ _Hope: Does that mean a tie?  
_ _Light: I’d HOPE so  
_ _Hope: :)  
_ _Hope: Taking over my job?  
_ _Light: never  
_ _Light: But do you still want to go? The formal ones are usually...  
_ _Hope: Super boring?  
_ _Light: Yes, I suppose  
_ _Hope: I’ll go anywhere with you, Light. Even if it IS super boring  
_ _Light: And that’s why I love you  
_ _Hope: Love you too :)_

Hope’s heart fluttered uncontrollably at the exchange. He couldn’t really decipher some of it – fundraiser? What job? - but the whole thing just had an ease he’d yet to experience with her. They were obviously so very comfortable with each other.

How had they gotten to that point? Would they ever get there again if his memories remained lost?

He shook his head and scrolled to another random conversation.

 _Light: Did you remember the eggs?  
_ _Hope: Light omg  
_ _Hope: So rude  
_ _Hope: How dare you think that I, your loyal husband, could so much as fathom forgetting the eggs?!?  
_ _Hope: Such nonsense!  
_ _Hope: The world shall never forget this day  
_ _Hope: the day you insinuated that I would forget something as important as the eggs!  
_ _Light: ...  
_ _Light: you forgot them, didn’t you?  
_ _Hope: I’m at a stoplight waiting to make a u-turn right now  
_ _Light: Pick up some chocolate too. I’ll eat it in front of you as punishment ;)  
_ _Hope: eggs-cellent :) but also rude  
_ _Light: ugh  
_ _Light: I may find another use for it  
_ _Hope: :)  
_ _Hope: I’ll be home asap. Love you  
_ _Light: Love you too._

That log was...odd, to say the least. It was silly and cutesy in a way that he never would’ve associated with _himself,_ much less Lightning. In fact, it was more of a conversation he would have expected Snow and Serah to have.

He frowned, scrolling a bit more until he came to the last log – one he noticed was timed the day before he’d hit his head and things had gotten crazy. Maybe it would give him a clue.

 _Light: My appointment’s at 10 tomorrow  
_ _Light: I’m a little nervous  
_ _Hope: Totally understandable, but everything will be fine, okay?  
_ _Hope: This will all work out. You’ll see  
_ _Light: I guess it’s just a lot to deal with. It’s not a problem I ever thought I'd have  
_ _Light: although it’s not like I gave it much thought before this  
_ _Hope: Whatever happens, happens. I’ll be with you all the way :)  
_ _Light: That means more to me than you could ever really guess.  
_ _Hope: I have a hunch :)  
_ _Hope: btw Snow said that Serah has some stuff for us, but she’s got lesson plans to work on. He doesn’t have practice, so is it okay if he comes by and drops it off?  
_ _Light: if he can get a key from Serah  
_ _Light: I don’t trust that big lug to find it even if I leave it under the mat  
_ _Hope: Fair enough. I’ll let him know  
_ _Hope: Love you  
Light: Love you too_

It was completely surreal. The ease at how they talked, the joy and silliness in their words, the way things were so _calm_ – it was like nothing he could have ever even _hoped_ to imagine.

And yet somehow, he was here now living it, taken to a time and place he wasn’t sure he quite deserved to be in.

Maybe another person would have jumped at the chance of living this perfect life, but it always made him a bit uneasy when the answers came without him looking or working for it. The reward was always greater when he put in as much effort as he could.

He’d done _nothing_ to deserve all of this.

He glanced at that last message again, feeling weirdly guilty. Whatever appointment Lightning had had obviously didn’t happen, given his head wound. He vaguely wondered if she’d reschedule it or if now there were more important things on her mind.

For a minute, he stared at the blank space below the message where he could type a new one. While he’d never used text communicators in the field – voice ones were much more convenient – he suddenly understood the appeal of thinking about what you were going to say without the other person staring at you.

Without another moment of hesitation, he typed.

_Hope: Sorry you missed your appointment_

To his surprise, the reply came a few seconds later.

 _Light: It’s fine. How’s your head doing?  
Light: your forehead, I mean  
  
_The head with his brain? Confused, lost, freaked out. His forehead, though? Hope impulsively touched it and immediately wished he hadn’t when he felt the scaly wound.

 _Hope: It’s itchy  
Light: Don’t scratch it. I don’t remember if Vanille explained it, but she used a special glue instead of traditional stitches. It should dissolve in about a week  
_ _Hope: That long?!  
_ _Light: I’ll  
_ _Light: sorry, typo. you’ll be fine_

He frowned a bit at the ‘typo,’ thinking somehow that it wasn’t exactly that. A part of him wished that Lightning would be herself around him.

But then again, it wasn’t like _he_ was himself in this world, so it was understandable. He sighed heavily, vaguely thinking about the conversation he and his parents had at dinner about how he did deserve this and that it was just his lack of memories that was in the way. While he wasn’t entirely convinced of that, he picked up the phone again and typed a new message.

_Hope: Would you like to have dinner tomorrow? Just us?_

Lightning’s reply came almost instantly.

_Light: yes  
Light: There’s a place that’s pretty casual towards the city that makes great steaks. Would that be okay?_

The mention of food made his stomach growl and he recalled that he hadn’t eaten much earlier. Maybe he’d pick at those leftovers in a little while, when his stomach wasn’t churning from uncertainty.

 _Hope: That sounds great  
Hope: Could you pick me up here?  
_ _Light: Of course. Around 6?  
Hope: Sounds good  
Light: Okay. I’ll see you then  
_ _Hope: See you then_

He let out a long breath when the phone went silent, feeling weirdly nervous. It was almost like they’d just agreed to start dating, which was just ridiculous. They were _married._

Hope listened to his parents’ voices, which traveled from the living room. Some show was playing and they were clearly discussing it, but he couldn’t make out any of the words. He knew that going out there for more advice would be fruitless. They’d said what they could and he wasn’t really sure they could offer anything different.

Maybe he needed a completely new perspective.

It took some searching, but Hope found a certain name in his contacts list. There was a green button next to it that showed a phone – one that looked more similar to what they’d had in Cocoon, anyway – and tapped it. It rang twice before someone picked up and he blurted out the name without thinking.

“Snow?”

“Hope!” Snow sounded the same as ever – well, before he’d wandered off from New Bodhum and disappeared. “Hey, what’s up? You never call me,” he added with a laugh. “Is the sky falling?”

“Well...”

Before he could explain, there was a loud voice that babbled something in the background. Hope caught his name and wondered if perhaps something was up with Serah, but Snow said, “Rosa wants to say hi to Uncle Hope. That okay?”

“Uh - ”

“Hi, Uncle Hope!”

“...Hi.” He racked his brain, trying to figure out what to say. He suddenly recalled that crayon drawing that’d been on the fridge when Lightning had let him explore the house and the photos of a little blonde girl. And of course, Snow had just said _Uncle_ Hope.

Was he talking to Snow and Serah’s _daughter?!_

As it turned out, he didn’t really need to be an ace conversationalist for this because she happily filled in the silence for him. “Guess what! I learned a new song at school today and then Daddy took me to get ice cream!”

“That’s...that’s great.”

“I got chocolate! And Daddy got some yucky flavor but he didn’t watch where he was going and his cone went _splat_ on the floor.”

“Hey hey hey,” came Snow’s voice in the background. “Uncle Hope doesn’t need to know that!”

“Yes he does. It was funny!”

Hope couldn’t help but chuckle. Though he and Snow had long since put aside their differences – by the time he was twenty-four, anyway – anybody who made fun of the guy was just fine in his book.

“Next time you visit, Uncle Hope, can we go get ice cream?”

“Oh, um, yeah. Yes. Sure.”

“And Aunt Lightning too! She can get double sprinkles like last time!”

His heart suddenly ached for a memory he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually had. Something like _that_ belonged to the Rightful Hope of This Time and Place. But of course, he wasn’t about to tell a kid that. “Sure...Rosa. I’m sure she’d like that.”

“Yay! Okay, bye!”

Hope’s head was spinning when Snow came back to the phone. “Sorry about that,” he said with a chuckle. “She really misses you guys. So, what’s up?”

There was a pause as he tried to figure out how to tactfully tell Snow what was going on. As he’d matured, Hope had learned to think before he spoke, a trait that was invaluable when leading a team.

“I woke up the other day with no memory of the past ten years,” he blurted out.

Or he could just take a cue from Snow and say whatever the hell came to mind.

Unsurprisingly, it was silent on the phone for a full ten seconds before Snow replied incredulously, “ _What?!”_

“I woke up yesterday in an actual bed, as opposed to a cot in my camp at the Yaschas Massif,” Hope explained. “And I have no idea how I got here. The last thing I remember is finding an artefact from the Farseer’s tribe next to a gate that Serah was supposed to come through.”

“ _Shit,”_ Snow breathed out. “That’s – _damn.”_

“Indeed.”

“Did Light take you to the hospital?”

“Yes, but only because when I woke up, I fell out of bed in surprise and hit my head on the nightstand.”

“Damn,” Snow repeated. His voice grew muffled for a second. “Serah! Baby, c’mere! Hope’s on the phone and he has amnesia! Yeah, for real!”

There were a couple of weird noises before Hope heard a familiar voice. Again he remembered that, according to his calculations from 5AF, he was supposed to see Serah again around now in his own time, popping right from that gate he'd mentioned.

This was _definitely_ not how he’d expected to talk to her again.

“Hi Hope,” Serah said, her tone already laced with concern. “What’s this about amnesia...?”

“I woke up the other day with no memory of the past ten years. I don’t know anything about this world or how I got here.”

“Oh. Oh...wow.” Serah let out a long breath that made the phone all staticky. “I’m assuming Lightning knows?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did they do any tests?” Snow asked, and Hope belatedly realized that somehow, they could both hear and speak to him. The wonders of new world technology. “Like an MRI or whatever?”

“Vanille suggested it, but...”

Somehow, Serah filled in the rest of the sentence. “...Lightning didn’t want you to?”

“No,” Hope agreed. “I don’t know why. But she’s already upset about all of this. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

Serah sighed a little, the noise clearly hiding a secret, but she didn’t elaborate and instead asked, “So in your mind, you’re...twenty-three?”

“Twenty-four,” he corrected.

“Then...” She murmured to herself a bit, sounding a little like she was counting. “Have you met me yet? From what you can remember?”

“Not yet. It’s supposed to happen soon, though.”

“That means you haven’t...oh. Oh dear.” She sounded more than a little concerned now.

“Haven’t what?”  
  
Another pause. “Maybe that’s something Lightning should explain. Is she there?”

“No. I’m with my parents.” Snow made a noise of confusion and Hope continued, “Look, I have always admired Lightning. In the time I remember, I would have given _anything_ to save her and see her again. But I never would have predicted the two of us being _married_ and having a home together in a world that’s like none I’ve ever seen. Could you maybe see what I would need some time to think about things?”

“ _Admired,”_ Snow said in a teasing voice, snickering before he went, “ _Oof!”_ Hope wondered if Serah had elbowed him in the side or something. Served him right.

“You’re in the right body, yes?” Serah asked. “I mean, Lightning didn’t say if you looked different or anything?”

“Nothing like that. It’s almost like it’s just my soul that’s different. But I have no idea how I or it could’ve gotten here, especially since Lightning is convinced this isn’t a paradox.”

“She’s right,” Serah said. “Look, let me get a hold of Noel and Yeul and I’ll see if they can come up with any ideas.” A pause. “Oh, wait, did Lightning tell you about them? I don’t suppose you would have met Noel yet.”

“She mentioned them,” he replied. He had no idea who they were, of course, or how they could possibly help, but anything was better than nothing. “Thanks, Serah.”

“No problem. We’re a family, you know? We need to look out for each other.”

“One big happy family!” Snow’s voice came from the background, and then there was some babbling that was presumably Rosa.

Hope remembered Snow telling him about that wish in Palumpolum all those years ago. It’d made him so angry back then for multiple reasons.

But now, he could definitely understand the appeal.

“I agree,” he finally replied to Serah. “Let me know if you find out anything, okay?”

“Of course. Take care of yourself.”

“I will.” As though Lightning would have him do any different.

They hung up and Hope stared at the screen of his phone, numbers flashing under Snow’s name to indicate the length of the call. It faded back to the icons moments later and he stared at it before rereading his earlier texts with Lightning.

Whatever was happening, at least it was clear that he wasn’t alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry (possibly belated) holidays for whatever you all celebrate :D
> 
> I kinda wish I had an excuse to do a fic entirely in texts, cause I loved writing those! Hope is the pun master, let it be known B)


	5. Chapter 5

Hope slept much better that night, despite still being confused as all hell about what was happening. Maybe it was just idea that people believed him and wanted to help. He’d been in a leadership position for so long that it was a weird sensation to just hang back, at least a little.

His parents were both at work and Hope knew he didn’t want to lay around all day again, especially since he was going out with Lightning later. He decided to take a walk and got dressed, his hand on the knob for the front door before he stopped himself.

What if he ran into somebody he knew?

Or was _supposed_ to know, at any rate.

He had no idea how close the Rightful Hope was to his parents’ neighbors. And sure, it was mid-morning and most people seemed to be at work or school, but the risk was still there. Considering how little he still knew about this world, there was no way he could fib his way through it, especially since he’d never really been any kind of smooth talker.

His hand fell off the doorknob and he kicked off his shoes with a sigh. There was just no way. Not unless someone – Lightning, preferably – was by his side to help him through the nuances.

No, he needed another way to occupy his time.

The pile of books was still in his room, the photo album beside them. He was so incredibly tempted to open it, especially after his texts with Lightning and the conversation with Snow and Serah. He’d managed to talk to their daughter, after all. If _that_ hadn’t freaked him out, why would a bunch of photos?

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Seeing the life that the Rightful Hope had led, the one he was in now and didn’t deserve...

Hope wasn’t sure he wanted to subject himself to anymore intruding thoughts.

Instead, he made a deal with himself – if dinner with Lightning went well, he’d look through the album. Surely whatever they’d end up talking about would give him the courage to deal with this.

That’s what partners did, after all.

He spent most of the afternoon reading through the books. It bothered him a little that he couldn’t immediately recognize if he or Lightning had picked it out. Sure, he didn’t really know what types of novels she liked, but he should have known his _own_ taste. Had it changed so much in ten years and a new world?

When he went in the bathroom to get ready, he eyed the scar on his chest, wondering about that. No one had mentioned it so far, which made him think that it was something only Lightning knew about. Maybe he’d get an explanation for it tonight.

Oddly, he felt sort of twitchy and nervous while waiting for her. His parents had come home by then and seemed amused, but luckily didn’t comment any further, especially when he scrambled for the door when the bell rang. His breath caught when he saw her standing there in a simple sleeveless blue dress with casual-looking sandals on her feet. It wasn’t an attention-grabbing outfit at all.

Yet he couldn’t look away.

“Uh...” he finally managed to croak out, then cleared his throat. “Hi.”

“Hey.” She gave him a tiny smile and stepped inside the house, looking him up and down with apparent approval. He hadn’t had much in the way of clothes to choose from, so he’d gone with a pair of gray slacks and a white button-down shirt.

“You look nice,” he blurted out. His face felt hot. Was he blushing? Technically, here in this world, Lightning was his wife. He was _supposed_ to compliment her!

“Oh.” To his amazement, her cheeks grew pink. Did the Rightful Hope never compliment her? Shame on him. “Thank you.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Are you ready?”

“Steak, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He could do this. _He could do this._ Even if he ignored the soft expression on her face and the calm way she held herself, there was nothing stopping him from enjoying a dinner with someone he...admired. “Lead the way.”

“This way.” She took his hand, which immediately started sweating, to lead him to the car. He called out a goodbye to his parents, the night ahead of him suddenly stretching endlessly.

–--

She’d been right: this steak was _great._

While he didn’t go hungry while working at the Academy, more luxurious dishes were a rarity, usually saved for celebrations. He’d long since gotten used to the dehydrated meals people on Cocoon provided (since there were no longer any fal’cie for food production) or meat from Pusle that’d been seasoned like crazy to make it taste like something other than rubber.

So to have steak so casually like this was amazing.

Hope kept the conversation on the deliciousness and neutral topics, like the books he was reading or Vanille and Fang or her job. Sticking to safe topics just felt, well, _safe._ The whole conversation was a verbal tap-dance where he felt like he was warming up to the bigger questions. At the same time, he could tell that Lightning was working up the nerve to tell him something.

But clearly, neither of them were quite ready. It was inevitable, but he very much appreciated the fact that she was waiting for the right moment. Nobody should have to have a serious conversation while they were eating steak.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when dinner was over and they left the restaurant, but he was pleasantly surprised when Lightning extended an offer to prolong the evening. “Is it okay if we go somewhere else?”

The words were flying out before he could even think about them. “Anywhere with you.”

She smiled at that, the two of them in a comfortable silence as she drove for about fifteen minutes. The sky had grown dark by this point and wherever she was taking them, there weren’t many lights or lamps. It reminded him a little of Pulse, where the only light in the darkness were the stars.

When she finally parked the car, he could see the moonlight bouncing off of something familiar, his eyes widening when they exited the car.

“The ocean,” he said. He hadn’t seen the sea in years, not since his last visit to New Bodhum in 2AF.

“We come here a lot,” Lightning said, coming to stand beside him and listening to the gentle roll of the waves for a moment. “I like to think of it as ‘our’ spot.”

“It’s beautiful.” Almost like he’d done it before, Hope started walking. Lightning easily fell into step beside him. There was a small strip of grass they had to cross before their feet touched the sand, and he immediately felt some crawl into his shoe. Worth it.

A contemplative silence took over. It was like they were both gauging what, exactly, to bring up first, because it was clear that _some_ kind of discussion was going to happen. He just wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be the one to start it. Even though he was always more than happy to take the lead, it was different with Lightning. She was the one who had taught him to look forward, after all.

Plus, she was literally leading him right now. He had no idea where to go once the reached the shore, so he followed her in the random direction she took.

He stared at her as they walked, her skin illuminated by the moonlight. He remembered all those times on Pulse where he’d be trying to sleep while she was taking watch, but his eyes would always be on her instead. It was like he’d somehow known that she would disappear when it was all over.

Joke was on him, he supposed, since they were both alive and well now.

When he couldn’t take the quiet any longer, he asked, “Does the beach remind you of Bodhum?”

She glanced at him, looking both surprised and a little relieved. As long as one of them broke the silence, maybe it would get easier from there. Maybe. “A little,” she replied. “You enjoy it more than I do, I think.”

“I can see why.” He’d never really been a ‘beach person’, per say, but he knew that going anywhere with Lightning would make something a whole new experience.

“To be honest...” Her steps slowed a bit and he follow suit, his heart suddenly pounding. Was that the icebreaker that would lead to what they clearly needed to talk about? Apparently so, because she continued, “I don’t really think about the Crystal Age that much anymore.”

They both stopped walking, like Hope’s surprise was a physical force. The phrase nagged at his head, but he couldn’t put a definition to it. “Crystal Age?”

Lightning sighed and glanced around before she took off her sandals. To his amusement, she plopped down right in the sand near the shore, the waves gently lapping at her bare feet. He pulled off his shoes and socks as well, setting them neatly beside him as he sat next to her.

Anything to soothe themselves from the inevitable conversation.

“That’s what we call the world you remember.” She stared out at the water. “And by ‘we,’ I mean people like Serah and Vanille and the others. The average person has no memories of it.”

He supposed this would have been a little less shocking had he not literally just been in the Yaschas Massif just the other day – or at least, according to his mind. As it was, he could barely wrap his head around someone not remembering something that was so clear to him.

“I don’t understand.”

“A lot happened between what you say you remember and now,” Lightning said, casting a glance at him. “It...hasn’t just been ten years from when you remember.”

“What?”

“It’s been well over a thousand. We were there when the Crystal Age ended.”

Hope considered himself a fairly smart person. After all, he’d skipped several grades in order to be able to work at the Academy and eventually lead it. People came to him for the answers.

But he just could _not_ make any sense of this.

“How?”

She looked at him again. “It’s a long story.”

No matter how much it freaked him out, he knew one thing for sure. “I have to know.”

A sigh escaped her as she look out at the sea again, her toes wiggling in the surf that lapped up to her feet. It was weirdly adorable. Ugh, _focus._ “You know that time travel is possible, right? You said you were expecting to see Serah again, from what you remember.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I remember last seeing her in 2AF, and then I heard reports of her and someone else appearing through a mysterious gate in the Bresha Ruins in 5AF. We used the energy samples to calculate her reappearance at the Yaschas Massif.” He paused, then figuring if anybody would understand this, it’d be Lightning. “...It was partially why I established a base there. I’d already lost everyone around me and she was my last connection to you.”

Lightning grew quiet for a minute. “You had good intuition, even then.”

“It wasn’t just intuition. A lot of it was science.”

“Even so.” She smiled a tiny bit. “You were right. She came there with Noel. I mentioned him, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” He remember the name from back when she was explaining what everyone was up to. Serah had mentioned him as well, during their phone call. “So he’s a friend of Serah’s?”

“We’re all close. I...actually met Noel in a place called Valhalla.”

Hope sat up a bit straighter, his brain already working. “I know that word. It came up a lot in writings about the seeress and the Farseers. It was usually used in conjunction with the term 'Unseen Realm'.”

“I wasn’t in the pillar holding up Cocoon.” Lightning drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “The goddess Etro took me to Valhalla. My disappearance was a paradox because Noel came from a distant future that was not supposed to happen. He was the last human in the world.”

Hope didn’t even want to think about the ‘last human’ thing, partially because he was hung up on something else Lightning said. “Wait, you weren’t in the pillar? So all I had to do was find a way to Valhalla?!”

“It wasn’t that easy.” She sighed heavily. “I had Serah and Noel search for Valhalla. _Your_ path was to change the future.”

He paused. “...Did I?”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t really sure if he was supposed to be hearing all of this. Surely once the Rightful Hope of This Time and Place came back, he’d go back to his own time knowing the future and perhaps things would pan out differently. Maybe he would try to change something and just end up screwing it all up.

But he had to know.

Lightning explained about his dedication in building a new Cocoon. She told him about the man named Caius, guardian of all the Yeuls across history, who recorded their prophecies in something called an Oracle Drive.

“In my memories, my team just excavated one,” Hope said. “We haven’t looked at it yet since we’re still gathering data.”

“I think it was of - ”

“Don’t tell me.” He held up a hand. “If I am supposed to be there, I don’t want to know until I see it.”

There was a beat before Lightning made a frustrated noise. “Why are you so convinced this is a paradox? We’re in a whole new world away from all of that. There’s nothing happening here except that you somehow got amnesia.”

“How often do people just wake up with ten-year gaps in their memory, Light?” He suddenly felt exhausted.

“You hit your head.”

“I couldn’t remember anything even _before_ that.”

That seemed to surprise her and Hope belatedly realized he’d never mentioned that little tidbit. The confusion seemed to radiate from her in waves, but finally she said, “It’s...it something simple. It has to be.”

“Why are _you_ so convinced that it is?” Conversing with her like this was strange, to say the least. Sure, she’d eventually come to see him as a partner when they were l’cie, but in his mind, she’d been gone for so long that they’d basically just had conversations in his head – and he was definitely _not_ argumentative with her.

Real life was always a shock, he supposed.

“Because we made sure of that when we came to this world,” she said matter-of-factly. “Like I said, we were there when the Crystal Age ended. Caius stayed behind with all the Yeuls of history, save for the last one.”

“That’s the one that lives here now?”

“Yes.”

“So Caius and these Yeuls...they kept all the stuff from the...Crystal Age away?”

“More or less.” Lightning rested her head on her knees. “They keep the Unseen Realm where it’s supposed to be.”

She went on to explain about her time in Valhalla, how she could track the span of every possible timeline while fighting with Caius. Hope heard about how he himself built a new Cocoon, a project spanning the course of centuries, and traveled through time to see it lift.

“It was supposed to be a new age,” she said. “I guess it was, for a reason.”

“How so?”

“A lot of this is muddled for me,” she said, shaking her head a little. “But Caius was defeated, and in doing so, the Chaos in Valhalla was unleashed. It more or less caused time to stop, since there’s no time in the Unseen Realm.”

“Really?” Hope couldn’t even imagine time just... _stopping._ “But if the real world and Valhalla merges – wouldn’t that mean you were free? And you could come back to us?” _Back to me,_ he didn’t add.

Lightning was quiet for a very long time before she finally answered. “I turned to crystal.”

“What?! But - ” He had the urge to look at his wrist to see if a l’cie brand was there, something he hadn’t done in years. “How?!”

She seemed to wrestle with her thoughts for a long moment before she spoke. “Things were...bleak,” she said. “I became crystal to preserve a memory.”

“Oh.” Of course, he wondered what, exactly, she felt like she needed to preserve to go through such drastic measures, but the answer came to him as quickly as the question. “...Something happened to Serah. Didn’t it?”

Another pause, and she nodded. To his horror, when he looked at her, there were tears in her eyes. One escaped and slowly trailed down her cheek, which she hastily wiped away.

“Oh shit,” he blurted out before he could stop himself, his body turning completely towards hers. “I’m sorry, Light – I didn’t - ”

“It’s fine.” She waved him off, blinking rapidly. “Really. I’ve just had no reason to think about any of this for years.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, his arms lifting up for a second before he dropped them, not quite sure what to do. “I wish I remembered. You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to.”

“I do, though.” She let out a breath. “You should know.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded, launching back into the story. Apparently she’d been crystal for about five-hundred years, only waking up when there were thirteen days until the world was supposed to end. Hope had been trapped in his own creation, the new Cocoon he’d built. They both became puppets of the god Bhunivelze.

“I’ve seen that name before,” he mused.

“I guess his name was lost to history before people started exploring Pulse more,” she said. “But he didn’t know anything about humans. He designated me as the Savior of souls so that I could bring them all to the new world he was creating.”

Hope glanced around. “ _This_ world?”

“It was supposed to be. But it didn’t quite end up that way.”

Bhunivelze had been working through him, she said. He’d deemed all of humanity impure and wanted to cleanse everyone's souls into emotionless purity for the new world. Hope shuddered at the thought.

“He absorbed your emotions and that's how I was able to defeat him. After that, your soul was free from all his influence,” Lightning said in a quiet voice. “I couldn’t let you go.”

His heart lurched. “What?”

“I had my knife. That survival knife I lent to you when we first met,” she explained. “I used that to save you.” She glanced at him. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have a scar on your chest.”

He instinctively touched the center of his chest. “It’s from the knife?”

“Yes. I don’t know why or how, but it’s from the knife. A remnant that survived along with us, I guess.”

He rubbed his shirt a little, trying to imagine that feeling. “...And then?”

“Saving you threw me to the darkness. I was supposed to keep Bhunivelze in the Unseen Realm.” She leaned back on her hands and stretched out her legs. “Always a sacrifice, I guess.”

“But...” he trailed off in confusion. “You’re _here.”_

For some reason, she smiled a bit. “You had a choice. You could be reborn with a guarantee of having your parents back, or...”

A lump formed in Hope’s throat and suddenly it was _him_ that felt like crying. “I saved you. Instead of choosing my parents, I saved you.” He looked at her. “Right?”

At her tiny nod, the tears spilled. He’d never been much of a crier, even when he was upset – emotional moments usually made him either lash out or shut down – but that realization put everything over the top and it was just so _much._

No wonder Lightning had been so upset when he’d asked to stay with his parents. At the most pivotal moment possible, he’d chosen her. It was _always_ her, it has always _been_ her, and it would always _be_ her.

But even with all of this newfound knowledge swimming in his head, he couldn’t quite connect it to the way his head was now. Knowing that he hadn’t simply lost ten years worth of memories, but a _thousand_ years worth...it was almost too much to handle.

He scrubbed his arm over his eyes, his voice hoarse as he apologized for crying. “Sorry.”

There was a touch on his hand and he looked down to see Lightning covering his with her own. “Don’t be.” Whether she was talking about the crying or everything else, who knew.

For awhile, the watched the moonlight dancing on the sea, the waves still making gentle laps on their feet. When he finally felt like he’d composed himself somewhat, he dared to ask, “So we took this world and made it ours?”

“Yes.” Her hand twitched like she wanted to move it, but just left it there on his. He couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful for the touch. “It has a history that’s all real. Everything that happened here did at some point. We all just sort of...got sent to the perfect timing, I guess.”

“It is pretty nice,” he admitted. “The calmness is the best part. It’s strange to not have to worry about monsters or anything like that.”

“I agree.” Her lips curved in a tiny smile. “It’s what we were fighting for the whole time. Peace. Happiness. The ability to live our own lives.”

Hope hummed a little in agreement, finally calming down. The ocean was helping. “What about after we got here?”

“Hmm?”

He glanced at her. “When we got to this world. What happened with us? How did we get... _married?”_

To his surprise, she laughed a little under her breath. “It happened pretty fast,” she said. “Or at least, I think it did. It probably wasn’t fast enough for you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

“I traveled around by myself for about a year after we woke up here,” she said. “There was a lot I needed to think about. But one day, I got a message from you. Serah had given you my number.” She smiled a little. “You just said that you’d be waiting.”

For the first time since waking up with his head all screwy, Hope truly, desperately wished that he hadn’t lost his memories or gotten caught in a paradox or whatever the heck was going on. He could just tell that the one Lightning was remembering was something precious. Something to be shared.

And he didn’t have that.

“Was I?”

“Yes.” Her smile grew soft. “I stepped off the train station to this town and you were there, waiting at the end of the road. You told me the same thing you did when you saved me.”

The words were out of him before he realized what was happening. “We’ll be together.”

Lightning whipped her head around, breath caught in her throat. “Yes,” she breathed out. “Do you remember that?”

“I...” Hope rubbed his forehead, mindful of his wound. “I don’t know. I just knew the words. I don’t remember seeing you.” His voice grew wistful. “I wish I did.”

“You will eventually.”

He didn’t want to get into an argument about his memories or whatever it was, so he simply asked, “And we were? Together, I mean?”

“We were.” Her hand curled around his a bit. “We moved in together pretty much immediately, especially since it was near Snow and Serah’s place. Once I came back, those two got married and had Rosa less than a year later.”

While he could understand Serah waiting for her sister before doing something so monumental, there was something Hope _didn’t_ understand. “How come you never told me about Rosa? I called Snow earlier and he had me talk to her on the phone. She sounds like a good kid.”

“She...she is.” Lightning seemed to choose her words carefully. “I guess I’m just so used to having her around that it didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t know her.” A bit of sadness flickered in her eyes, gone as soon as it came. “You're her favorite person.”

“I am?”

“Oh, yes.” She chuckled quietly. “She was barely two when we got married, but you insisted on having her in the wedding. You carried her down the aisle and helped her toss out flower petals.”

“I did?” It was his turn to chuckle. He’d never given much though to kids – everyone he knew back in his memories was married to their job – but the thought of a family had always appealed to him, especially after losing everyone one by one. There was just something about the idea of having people you could turn to no matter what, people who were _yours_ that you could count on.

Of course, he considered everyone he’d met as a l’cie his family. That would never change, no matter what was up with his head. But having something concrete and solid that was _his_ would be amazing.

“It was a nice wedding,” Lightning said, startling him out of his thoughts. “Fang caught my bouquet. She and Vanille still aren’t married, though.”

That genuinely surprised him. “How come?”

“You know Fang.” He wondered about that, all things considered. “She’s probably waiting for the most dramatic moment.”

“Sounds about right.” He chuckled quietly. “You know, I’m sort of amazed we just kind of...got together.”

“Me too,” she said. She gripped his hand and he felt himself squeezing it back. “I definitely had my doubts. But when I got off the train and saw you...I don’t know. It was like everything made complete sense in that moment.”

He sighed and wondered if he would ever get that back – the feeling of everything coming together, that moment where it all clicked and he could love without the guilt of thinking that he didn’t belong here.

Some version of him deserved all of this. He just didn’t know if it was _him._

–--

After brushing the sand off of their feet and clothes for what felt like an hour, Lightning drove Hope back to his parents’ house. Despite their conversation and all the revelations, he knew he couldn’t go back to her – their – house. He needed time for the dust to settle and to let everything sink in.

The lights were all off in the house, so they stopped on the front porch. “I had a good time,” he said. And despite the tale that was making his head spin, he really _had_ enjoyed everything else. Being with Lightning was special, no matter what they were doing.

“Me too.” She smiled, gentle in the dimness of the porch light. “Maybe we could do it again tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he replied, maybe a little too quickly.

She chuckled under her breath, the two of them standing there awkwardly for a long moment. She shifted her weight as though to go back to her car, but then asked, “Would you mind if I...?”

“Oh,” he said, realization dawning. “No. I mean, I don’t mind.”

Something about the expression on her face changed, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was before she tugged on his waist. He completely fell into it as her arms wrapped around him tightly, her face buried in his neck. Her breath tickled his skin and it made his body stir in ways he could barely comprehend, and the ensuing lightheadedness was totally what compelled him to lift his arms and hug her back. He lightly gripped her dress at the waist, feeling rather than hearing her breath shake.

This was ridiculous. It was a _hug,_ clearly something she and the Rightful Hope did a lot, considering this was the second time she’d asked for one. He wondered at the story behind that, or if there even was one. Maybe this version of them just liked hugs.

She stood on her tiptoes a moment later and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. His eyes flew open – when had he closed them? - and he immediately pressed a hand to his face as they pulled away, staring at her in surprise. Her eyes flickered to his lips, but then went right back to his eyes.

“I...” She looked sad and hopeful all once. “...Goodnight, Hope.”

“Y-Yeah.” His hand fell from his face, the urge to pull her back so strong that he almost obeyed, but he knew he couldn’t. “You too, Light.”

He watched her head back to her car, not heading inside until she started it up safely and drove away. When he closed the front door, he thunked the back of his head against it, only one thing certain in his muddled up head.

He was soooooo _screwed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've played through LR a bunch of times and have read countless translations and articles and stuff, but it still confuses me lololol 
> 
> if it seems like Lightning left stuff out of her explanation, some of it's due to that....and also keep in mind for the rest of the fic that she could only tell Hope what happened from her point of view. ahem ;D
> 
> but thank you all so much for your comments so far! they really do brighten my day a lot!


	6. Chapter 6

As per the agreement with himself, the next day, Hope opened the photo album.

He wasn’t really sure what to expect. Lightning’s story last night had mostly told him about the thousand years (gods, he _still_ couldn’t believe that) between his memories and now, without really talking much about the _now_ part. He knew they’d gotten together at his urging and had a nice wedding, but not much else.

The photos gave him such a good idea of what was, though. He spent hours flipping through the album, studying each picture like he’d be tested on it later. And who knew, maybe he would be, if someone figured out if this truly was simple memory loss or not.

But it was all so amazing to him. The album started out with a bunch of scenic shots. A field of roses. A blurry image of some lights. Something that looked like that painting of that tower in the bedroom. Then came Snow and Serah, with Snow's long arm holding the camera and kneeling down so they could both be in the shot. A couple of Snow and Serah’s wedding photos. A shot of her dress hung up in front of a window. Lightning, wearing a light blue gown, smiling as she and Serah toasted with champagne glasses. A full shot of the wedding party – apparently both he and Lightning had been in it. It looked like Lebreau was the other bridesmaid, along with a short girl with long, pale hair that was unfamiliar. The other groomsmen seemed to be Gadot and Maqui.

Huh. Maybe Yuj had been the makeup artist.

A picture of a motorcycle. A picture of a shiny car parked in someone’s driveway. Snow and Serah _on_ the motorcycle. Photos of Fang and Vanille, holding some dogs that appeared in their own pictures shortly after. A picture of Lightning holding one of the dogs, looking extremely apprehensive about it. He recognized the dogs from the pictures that'd been stuck on the fridge, which at least solved that mystery.

The unfamiliar girl that’d been in Serah’s wedding photos made some more appearances. In lot of the pictures she was with a handsome brunet guy. Hope wondered if they were the mysterious Noel and Yeul Lightning had mentioned. Something nagged at him in the back of his head when he looked at the guy, but he couldn't make any sense of it.

And then he came to the wedding photos.

His breath caught in his throat at the first one, and he scarcely breathed at the rest them, like they’d vanish if he moved too much. There was a similar picture of a dress hung in front of a sunny window, like Serah had done. A picture of a pair of shoes. One of Lightning’s hand, her nails done in a simple manicure as she rested them on a bouquet of flowers with a glittering ring catching the light. Fang and Vanille and Serah, their arms looped around each other’s shoulders. A shot of Lightning and Serah, both of them smiling widely. One of Lightning with her full dress and veil, with the sun in the background so that she appeared to be a silhouette.

There were a couple of photos of him, clearly his side of the wedding prep. His mom adjusting his tie. Snow laughing, one hand in the air like he was going to ruffle Hope’s hair but then thought the better of it. A blurry shot of him with his parents. Snow holding Rosa and Hope gently high-fiving her.

To his surprise, at the first formal picture of the ceremony, Serah and Fang were on Lightning’s side, while Snow and Vanille were on his. Clearly they hadn’t given a damn about symmetry or tradition. Then again, Fang had worn a suit, so he supposed it pretty much evened out.

Of course, there were tons more of the ceremony photos. There was him walking down the aisle, holding Rosa as a toddler just as Lightning had described. There were several pics of her clutching fistfuls of rose petals in her chubby fist, Hope’s face in various states of amusement. He was outright laughing in one of them, which he stared at for a long time.

Then came Fang and Vanille walking down the aisle arm-in-arm, followed by Snow and Serah, all of them looking ridiculously happy and excited. One photo of a young boy holding a pillow with the rings confused him for a second until he realized it was Dajh.

And then there was Lightning.

He lingered over these photos, studying every detail. Whoever had taken them – and clearly it’d been more than one person, considering how many different angles there were – had apparently been as enamored with her appearance as he was. She was wearing the same dress he’d noticed in the picture back at the house – a strapless gown with layers of fabric that draped into a perfect ballgown skirt. There were three fabric roses arranged on the left side of her hip. Her veil was long, ending at her lower back, and attached to her hair with roses – either fake clips or real ones, he wasn’t sure. She was wearing a diamond-y looking bracelet and earrings shaped like teardrops and held a bouquet of mixed colored roses, tied together with pink and white ribbon.

The look on her face was that soft, gentle expression he’d come to know since waking up here. Her eyes basically glowed with happiness. There was zero hesitation or trepidation, which was honestly one of the most surprising things of all. After all, the Lightning he remembered had always been ready to take up her sword and go into battle. No hesitation, eyes on the prize. Keep your eyes front.

But _this_ Lightning...there was nothing hard about her. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have thought she was a totally different person, at least just from these photographs. While he’d always known she was certainly _capable_ of this kind of gentle happiness, it just hadn’t been in the cards – not when they were constantly on the move and checking their brands.

This world was clearly good for her in ways he hadn’t even started to realize.

It looked like they’d held hands throughout the whole ceremony. Their eyes barely strayed from each other in any of the photos – not that he could blame himself. There was a picture of him looking like he was about to cry as he slid the ring onto Lightning’s finger.

In the picture of the kiss, he was amazed at how closely they were pressed together, like even the tiniest sliver of space was way too much. One arm was tightly around her waist and the other cupping her neck, and her one visible arm was hugging him back. There were photos of the others looking incredibly excited, except Dajh, who just looked bored.

The reception photos were something else. They filled a huge chunk of the album – a first dance. A wedding party dance. Kisses while dancing. His parents dancing. Dajh holding up Rosa as she balanced on his feet. Lightning and Serah dancing. Sazh and Vanille dancing, with Fang looking like she was about to shake her head in the background. Pictures of the food, the centerpieces, the tables, the guests – many unfamiliar. There was one blurry shot of him and Lightning, the two of them squeezed together as he held the camera, his arm extended just of view, and then an even blurrier one of him leaning down to kiss her. A picture of Lightning tossing her bouquet over her shoulder, Fang’s form a blur as she leaped to catch it.

Looking at those pictures made his heart physically hurt. He wanted that so badly – but he wanted that for _him,_ not the Rightful Hope of This Time and Place. He’d done nothing to deserve this, not yet. And if this was some kind of paradox, it’d be foolish of him to try and live a life that belonged to another version of him.

But he didn’t want to let himself think about that.

After the wedding pictures, he was surprised at the amount of photos that came next of just the two of them. One of them holding up drinks in a glass, like they were toasting the camera. Lightning walking ahead, her head turned like she was looking for him. Her eating a forkful of some decadent-looking dessert. Him sticking his tongue out with whipped cream on his nose. The two of them squished into the frame with some kind ornate building behind them. Him clearly asleep, his hair mussed and spot of drool on the pillow.

Hmph. That one was clearly doctored. He did _not_ drool.

It wasn’t until he saw a picture of that tower – like the painting in the bedroom – that Hope realized these were pictures from their honeymoon. No wonder they looked so carefree. So happy. So...so...

So in _love._

Perhaps it was because – in his head, anyway – he’d gone ten years thinking that she was crystallized and hadn’t really imagined anything beyond getting her back, but the idea that they were actually in _love_ felt almost...fake, somehow. It was a feeling that just didn’t belong to this version of him. How could he possibly just slip into this life and be a man in love?

Of course, it wasn’t like it’d be _difficult_ to fall in love with Lightning. But this was a version of her that he hadn’t had the privilege of getting to know.

Did he _want_ to know her? Of course he did. But it wasn’t like his memory gap or paradox or whatever was going on was going to _help_ or something.

The last few pictures in the album were of Snow and Serah and a baby – Rosa, he assumed. A couple of spaces were empty, presumably pulled from the album for whatever reason. There was a shot of Serah with her huge, round stomach, laying in bed while Snow sat beside her with an equally huge grin. Luckily there weren’t any pics of the birth itself, just the aftermath of a tiny bundle in Serah’s arms. A close-up of Rosa’s face. Lightning leaning in next to Serah, the baby in her mother’s arms. Snow holding Rosa, Hope standing next to him with a hand patting his back.

He couldn’t look away from the last photo for a long while. It was of Lightning holding Rosa, her expression soft and happy. Serah had her chin resting on her sister’s shoulder, watching with a content gaze. Hope was on the other side of Lightning, one hand cupping Rosa’s head and the other around Lightning's waist. There was something about it that screamed at him in a way he couldn’t quite understand. Maybe it was a message for the Rightful Hope, and he was simply not allowed to receive it.

At any rate, the album filled his heart with longing. So many memories. And there were so many _more_ in moments that hadn’t been captured. If he never got his head straightened out, how long would it take for the reality of that to set in? Ten years, a thousand years – it was a long time, yes, but he was more interested in the memories of the past six years, since he and Lightning had been together. Those were the ones that mattered the most here in this world, and he had none of that.

But he wanted it. _Gods_ did he want it.

–--

“Hope Estheim,” he addressed his reflection, “you’ve definitely looked better.”

He stood in front of the mirror in just his boxers, staring at his thirty-three year old self. At first he’d simply been waiting for the shower water to warm up, but then he’d gotten distracted by the scar on his chest. Now that he knew it was a remnant from the world he knew, actual physical _proof_ that Lightning had saved him from the abyss, he couldn’t stop staring at it. She risked herself for him. She loved whatever relationship they’d formed _that_ much.

“Seriously amazing,” he murmured. It still blew his mind that this was a universe where Lightning Farron loved him. Was _in_ love with him.

Then he finally got to looking at the wound on his forehead. It had turned an ugly shade of purple, which made it look worse than it felt. Whatever Vanille had used was holding it together nicely, but he’d accidentally touched it a few times while washing his face or in the shower, so it would probably leave a scar.

Other than that, he didn’t quite feel like he was in the wrong body anymore. He was getting used to the differences between then and now and knew he’d be happy to stay in this version of himself.

And that was so, so dangerous.

“You haven’t earned this,” he told himself. “The one she saved wasn’t _you._ You’re literally from a different time and place.”

But who was he kidding? He _did_ want this – the soft, happy Lightning who was calmer than he knew she could be. All of his closest friends nearby. His parents, alive and well. It was something he could never even hope to dream about it, and here it was, practically handed to him.

He hadn’t spoken to Snow or Serah or anyone about what could have possibly happened since that first phone call. That was probably telling – like maybe, in his heart of hearts, he didn’t _want_ to fix any of this and go back to his own time.

Hope looked down at his hand, where the wedding ring was glinting under the bathroom lights. From the beginning of all this, he hadn’t taken it off. Ostensibly it was because he didn’t want to hurt Lightning’s feelings, but now he knew that he just _couldn’t._ It was a comfortable weight that was oddly familiar. He’d be naked without it now.

“Stop it,” he muttered to himself.

Once he started something, though, he had to see it through.

After his shower, he went back to his room to get dressed, jumping a little as his phone made a noise. However convenient they were, he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually get used to that. Monster roars were more familiar to him. He unlocked it to see a text from Lightning, his heart thudding wildly for...no reason at all, nope.

_Light: There’s finally an opening at the shop for your car. What else did you need besides the tires rotated?_

He frowned a little as he typed back:

_Hope: I’m not sure. What else do cars need?_

A long pause, and then:

_Light: Sorry. Forgot about your memory_

His heart sank a little. She’d momentarily forgotten about their situation. Since she had a question about a car that belonged to him, of course she would text her husband about it. But she didn’t have her husband – just this paradox or memory loss mess of a man that knew nothing about the world around him.

 _Hope: I’d like to learn how to drive a car. Maybe I could take it to the shop for you and then you could bring me home?  
_ _Light: Your car’s a death trap. Not exactly good for learning in  
_ _Hope: Get Snow to drive it then  
_ _Light: :)  
Light: That could actually work. Once it’s dropped off and I bring Snow back to his place, want me to pick you up for a lesson? I’ll bring you back home after  
_ _Hope: I’d like that  
_ _Light: Sounds good_

He put the phone down and threw on some clothes, exhilarated at the thought of being beside Lightning again. Things seemed to settle into place when he was next to her.

He thought about his parents’ advice.

Suddenly, he found himself packing up the duffel bag. Since his parents were at work, he raced into a kitchen and scribbled a note for them so they wouldn’t be surprised at coming back to an empty house.

There was no turning back.

–--

“Are you sure you really want...a...lesson...” Lightning trailed off. She’d come to pick him up, but seemed surprised to see the duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

“Open the door, please?”

He watched her do just that, eyes lingering maybe a beat too long. She was wearing a tank top and tight pants that flared slightly at the ankles. It was an extremely casual outfit, and yet on her, it looked...

Instead of continuing that particular train of thought, Hope cleared his throat and stowed his bag in the backseat. Lightning was still watching him curiously, confusion and a bit of – dare he think it – hope in her eyes. “Why did you bring your stuff?”

“You said you’d bring me home,” he explained, referencing her text. “I assumed you meant, you know...our home.”

It seemed to take a moment to recall what he meant, but when she did, her eyes widened. “Oh, I meant here. Nora and Bartholomew’s home, since you’ve been staying here. I didn’t mean you had to come back with _me.”_

“What if I want to?”

The hope shone in her eyes. “Idiot. Of course I want you to come home.”

He smiled and gestured to the car. “Lead the way.”

–--

Driving was strangely more complicated than any other moving vehicle he’d been on. Maybe an airship would have been harder to control, but of course he’d always left that to Sazh.

Shifting gears was a lot like controlling the speed on hoverbikes when he was younger. Turning and the steering wheel were self-explanatory. But for some reason, he kept mixing up the gas and brake pedals and then would hit the brakes way too hard, making the car lurch every few feet.

“It’s a good thing this street is empty,” Lightning muttered.

“Hey, I think I'm doing okay!” Pffft, he knew he was not, and she raised an eyebrow, clearing echoing that thought.

“Just get us home.”

Easier said than done. He ran over a curb, lurched the car a couple more times, and hit a huge pothole before he finally parked the car crookedly in the driveway. Lightning was gripping a handle above her window, the other on the center console.

“Next time I drive,” she said.

“Maybe I just need a few more lessons,” he replied. “It’s not that complicated. I’m just not used to it.”

There was a pause as his words seemed to hit them both at the same time. He wasn’t used to driving, of course, because his head and memory were all screwed up. In a perfect world, driving would trigger something that would bring the rest of his memories back and things would be normal.

If only.

Lightning just cleared her throat and he glanced away, grabbing his bag from the backseat. He glanced up at the house as he walked up to it, following her. There was a little less trepidation than before, maybe because the place now wasn’t completely new to him.

It was new _enough,_ however, and he still hesitated before tentatively stepping into the living room. While it looked the same as he remembered – the comfy furniture, floor plan he couldn’t navigate without turning on a light, photos on the wall – it still felt a bit like he was a guest who couldn’t overstep his boundaries. He wasn’t really sure what he’d been expecting – maybe an epiphany that shook up time and space so that the Rightful Hope would come back and he’d be in his own time, working towards something like this. A man could dream.

“I was thinking of making spaghetti for dinner,” Lightning said, hooking her keys to a peg that was on the wall. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “That sounds good.”

She glanced at him, looking like she wanted to say something, but instead just took off her shoes and then headed towards the bedroom.

Hope watched her disappear down the hall, then set his bag on the couch and started unpacking it. The pillow was unceremoniously plopped near the armrest, and he took the dirty clothes out, folding them into a pile before carrying it to the washer. Sure, he hadn’t used one since he was a teenager – appliances like that were hard to come by in Pulse – but surely it couldn’t be that hard. Much easier than driving, anyway.

There wasn’t much else in the bag besides the books and his phone. He set his phone aside on the coffee table, then started putting the books he’d read back on the shelves he’d gotten them from. As he slid the album back into its spot, he noticed the framed photo of them hugging on their wedding day he’d seen that first day and stood up to give it a second look.

That happiness was still there. That _love._ He knew the picture wasn’t lying.

He just didn’t know if it was his to feel.

Lightning came back into the room while he was staring, having changed into a pair of sweatpants. She noticed what he was looking at and tilted her head a little in a silent question.

“I saw the photos in the album,” he explained. “The ceremony and reception. Was that our honeymoon after?”

“Yes.” She hesitated before asking, “Did seeing the pictures help you remember anything?”

He winced. “No.” At Lightning’s obvious disappointment, he hurriedly added, “They’re nice pictures, though.”

She sighed heavily. “They’re better memories,” she said dejectedly.

An uncomfortable silence fell around them and Hope knew that neither of them had the energy to deal with this right now. “So,” he said, turning away from the wall to head to the kitchen. “You said something about spaghetti?”

“Right.” She led him to the kitchen and he followed, not knowing if he usually helped with dinner, but he felt a strong need to do just that now.

Apparently he did usually help out, because Lightning seemed completely at ease with him there. They fell in sync in a way that made Hope think that this was some kind of body memory on his part, even if his head was all screwy.

And while the kitchen was a decent size, they somehow kept falling into a decaying orbit around each other. It wasn’t long until their arms brushed together or she’d casually touch his shoulder. When she stirred up a delicious-smelling sauce, he leaned over her shoulder to look and she automatically lifted the spoon to give him a taste.

The scary thing was that he didn’t mind any of this a bit. It was a dangerous game he was playing and he knew he should have shied away or kept his space, but he just didn’t _want_ to. He allowed this behavior like everything was normal. Maybe it was their way of pretending it was, but whatever the reason, he just couldn’t seem to help himself. He felt dangerously at ease, like it’d be so easy to just slip into this life without a thought.

Or _back_ into this life, if it really was just his memories that was the problem...but somehow he doubted it.

Once the food was ready and served, they sat down at a small dining room table he hadn’t given much thought to before. There was a big bouquet of flowers in the center, with some random papers and junk piled on the other side.

Lightning noticed him looking at it and kind of smirked to herself. “Most of that’s your stuff.”

“Seriously?” He glanced at it again. “I’m not _that_ messy, am I?”

“No. You just have a tendency to hoard things sometimes.”

“Really?” After a bite of spaghetti – which was really good – he said thoughtfully, “I guess that would be the natural progression of things.”

“How so?”

“Well, back in my time, we’re just starting out the major parts of our research and excavations,” he explained. “I think I’ve mentioned that we found an Oracle Drive. We’ve also found some objects that may suggest when the Farseers had their tribe there. Obviously there was no one on Pulse when we were there as l’cie, but it could have been as short as half a century ago that there was anybody still living there. But when you’re discovering artefacts, you want to keep everything you find in case there’s a piece of the puzzle you didn’t see before you found something else. I've found some weird things – stuff that floats or makes noise or glows, even after all this time. There's an unusual energy coming from something I found near one of those gates and I'm eager to look into it more.”

As he spoke, he noticed Lightning’s frown a little more the more he went on, until she wasn’t quite looking at him and was sort of just picking at her food. He wondered if he usually wasn’t much of a conversationalist during dinner.

“Um...” He felt self-conscious all of a sudden. “I’m sorry. Was I talking too much?”

“Not at all,” she replied, sighing a little. “It’s just...”

“What?”

Now _she_ looked uncomfortable. “I know your memory is messed up, but you’re talking like you’re going back to that place tomorrow. This world doesn’t have any of that. I know you like conducting research, but I just...I guess I’m used to you talking about what you did at your job. The one you have now, here. And it’s kind of a wake up call that things are different.”

“Oh.” He felt awful that he made her feel so bad. Of course he did. But...

Wait, no buts. He _did_ promise himself that he would try, no matter what was wrong.

“It’s fine,” she said, taking a bite of spaghetti.

“No it’s not,” he insisted. “Please, Light, if something I say or do bothers you, just tell me. I mean, I don’t have any context here.”

“You’re right.” She gave him a tiny smile, but of course it was no less beautiful than any other. “It’s just strange for me to think about the Crystal Age sometimes. We have a future we can focus on here.”

He wanted to say that back in his time – his memories – they were fighting for a future as well, where he could bring everyone together. But something in Lightning’s tone stopped him from saying as much. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was clear that whatever was happening here in this world was her utmost priority. Which, of course, was very understandable.

They ate in a comfortable silence for a minute before something that’d been bothering him compelled him to ask, “Oh yes, I was wondering something.”

“What is it?”

“When you mentioned me talking about research earlier – do I need to go back to wherever I work? I’m sure I can get up to speed if they give me a few days.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She patted his arm, a completely instinctual gesture that made his heart race for some insane reason. “Bartholomew let them know what was going on. Not specifically that you had amnesia, but just that you weren’t able to work for awhile.”

“Oh.” He wondered what he researched here, exactly, and if they’d be interested in the version of him that believed he was from a completely different world. Maybe they wouldn’t be, considering that, according to Lightning, pretty much no one remembered the Crystal Age. It was a strangely sobering thought. “Is that okay? I know you work, but...”

“It’s fine. You...had a lot of paid time off saved up.” Her voice was weirdly sad and she got a distant expression on her face before she gave him a tiny, reassuring smile and it was gone. “You just concentrate on getting better. As long as I have you here, I know it’ll be okay.”

“All right.” He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to go about that, but at least he didn’t have to worry about his screwed up head being the reason he and Lightning were thrown out of their house. But still...

They ate the rest of their dinner in a companionable silence, somehow ignoring the fact that they kept stealing glances at each other. He wondered what Lightning was thinking. It was becoming more and more obvious to him that he didn’t really belong in this world and now he was possibly messing up the future of the Rightful Hope.

And Lightning didn’t have him. Not really. He wasn’t the same Hope that she’d married and had built a life with.

He got up and took his plate to the sink, appetite suddenly gone. He needed to stop thinking about all of this.

But how was he supposed to do anything else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for all of your comments and encouragement! it really means a lot more than you could ever guess c:


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for mentions of abuse (there's no graphic descriptions or anything!)

They settled into a routine, and it was comfortable. _Too_ comfortable.

Almost like they were, ahem, _married._

Of course, Hope was sleeping on the couch instead of with Lightning in the bedroom. She didn’t like that, but he just couldn’t bring himself to get in bed with another man’s wife...even if the other man was him. And he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to share such an intimate space with her without crossing the line.

It wasn’t as though either of them were desperate for the others' attention or anything, but it was in the little things. The way her arm would brush against his. Her hand on his shoulder. How comfortable he felt now patting her hand or bumping his hip against hers when they made dinner. The hugs she asked for every night before going to bed, each of them often punctuated with a soft kiss to his cheek.

Even just _that_ was enough to drive him crazy.

But he was trying not to think about it, and before he knew it, around two weeks had passed and he was getting the hang of being in this world. Lightning gave him more driving lessons to the point where he’d improved enough to be able to drive around town while obeying every speed limit and sign. The glue holding his forehead wound together dissolved and it started to heal, although it was clear there would be a scar. Since Lightning worked from home three times a week, he’d bring her lunch those days – usually just leftovers, but sometimes he attempted to make something new – and get to see that soft, gentle smile when she thanked him.

One day when she had to go into her office, he noticed that the laundry was piling up, so he started the machine. It hadn't rained at all, so he watered the roses in the backyard. He saw that the fridge was looking empty, so he carefully drove to the grocery store, picking up things that looked familiar, and usually had dinner started or done by the time Lightning came home.

She never _asked_ him to do any of this, but he’d gone through most of the novels in the bookcase and nothing on the television was familiar enough to amuse him. Plus, he knew that asking someone to do something wasn’t how she operated. Action had always been her thing and it was clear she deeply appreciated what he was doing.

Doing things around the house made it feel more like a home – _his_ home. He knew that was a dangerous train of thought since it, of course, belong to the Rightful Hope, but between all he’d gone through as a l’cie and then subsequently losing most everyone he’d ever really cared about, it was nice to have something calm and steady for once.

He was looking out the window into the backyard one evening, thinking that the lawn looked like it could use some mowing – not that he'd ever mowed in his life – when the front door suddenly banged open and then _slammed_ so hard the house practically shook.

Hope dashed out into the living room, freaked out at first, which melted into concern when he saw it was Lightning. Her eyes were narrowed, jaw clenched, and there was a rip in her shirt. She barely gave him a glance before she stomped off to the bedroom, letting out a noise that clearly full of anguish and frustration before she slammed that door too.

The room seemed weirdly silent after all that and he had no idea whether to go after her or maybe call Serah. His phone, the ringtone sounding freakishly loud, startled him out of any ideas and he raced to pick it up before looking at who was calling.

“Hello?”

“Hope.” It was Vanille, sounding nervous. “Is Lightning home yet?”

“Y-Yeah.” He belatedly realized that he was shaking a little. The sight of Lightning looking so helpless and _angry_ was something he hadn’t experienced when it came to her since they were l’cie, way back before she’d accepted him as a partner. Truthfully, he was so used to her being able to control her emotions that everything felt off-kilter when it seemed like she just _couldn’t._

“Oh.” Vanille sighed heavily. “How’s she doing?”

“She came home and started slamming doors around before going to her room.”

“She didn’t tell you what happened?”

“No, she barely looked at me.” But that glance was enough to send his stomach into knots.

“Oh,” Vanille said again. “It’s something that happened at her job. Fang filled me in, I guess so I could warn you.”

“Warn me about what?”

“Fang was defending a couple of sisters with an abusive father,” she explained. Hope randomly remembered that Fang was a lawyer in this world, his head spinning as Vanille went on. “They ran away to the nonprofit Lightning works for a couple of times and got really close to her.”

“I thought Lightning just handled the paperwork side of things.”

“No...” The phone was silent for a moment and he wondered if Vanille had ironically forgotten about Hope’s memory gap. “I mean, yes, she does. But she’s also a kind of surrogate counselor. She’s not certified or anything, but she’s really good with a lot of the people that come through there.”

“I bet.” He remembered how patient she’d been with him during all of this, how she was empathetic and a good listener once she got out of her own head. It made sense that even people in this world would sense that.

“Anyway, those sisters had court today. Apparently they stole from and tried to attack their father in his sleep. Lightning went with them for moral support.”

“And?”

Vanille sigh gave him a burst of static. “...They lost the case.”

Hope froze, honestly wondering if he’d heard that right. _“What?!”_

“Fang told me that Lightning was really upset,” Vanille said. “I think cause justice failed, yeah, but also ‘cause of the sisters. Apparently they were the same ages as Lightning and Serah were when they lost their parents. Real young, you know?”

“...Oh.” The pieces were falling into place. In an instant, he could understand why Lightning was so upset.

Two sisters, alone in the world except for each other, just trying to survive the only way they knew how. It was not a story Hope had ever experienced personally, of course.

But he remembered how, sometimes during those long nights on Pulse, when everyone else was asleep, he’d keep watch with her and they’d talk. She’d told him about raising Serah, about abandoning her own dreams so she could join the Corps and ensure their survival, about how she felt guilty that she couldn’t give Serah everything she needed to be safe and happy and how it turned into the mess they'd all eventually found themselves in.

Lightning had been fifteen when her mother died – barely older than he’d been when he’d lost Nora. He couldn’t even think about how much harder things would’ve been if he’d had a younger sibling that needed looking after.

“Hope?”

“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “I’m gonna go and see if she needs anything.”

“All right.” Vanille seemed relieved to hear that. “And hey, keep in touch, okay? Just ‘cause your memory’s messed up doesn’t mean you need to forget _all_ about me.”

“As if I could.”

She laughed a little before they said their goodbyes and hung up. Hope stared at his phone for a moment, not quite sure what to do. What did Lightning need from him? What could he possibly do to make this better?

He set his phone down and headed towards the bedroom, pausing in the doorway. The door was half-open and he saw Lightning sitting at the edge of the bed, her back turned to him. It looked like her face was buried in her hands, but she wasn’t otherwise moving.

With a great deal of trepidation, he gently knocked on the doorframe, a bit surprised when that didn’t get him an answer, and slowly walked into the room. He hesitated for a full minute before sitting down next to her. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if she was going to freak out again and demand he leave the room or something. This was completely uncharted territory for him.

To his utter surprise, she leaned over slightly, so that their shoulders were touching. He scooted just a bit closer, surprised to hear that her breathing was so shaky, muffled by her hands.

How long they sat there was anyone’s guess, but he was a little relieved when she finally let her hands fall from her face. Her eyes and nose were red, but other than that, it didn’t actually look like she’d been crying.

“When the judge ruled in favor of the father,” she said in a hoarse voice, saying that last word like it was the last thing she wanted to call that person, “the younger sister started bawling. She held onto my shirt and wouldn’t let go until the bailiff physically dragged her away.”

That explained the rip. “At least you were there for them,” he said, feeling a little awkward. “You know, for moral support.”

“Some moral support I was. Fang had to stop me from going up there and punching the judge in the face.”

Despite everything, he couldn’t help but smile a tiny bit. At least _that_ sounded familiar. “Maybe you should have.”

“I wish. Though obviously it wouldn’t have helped.” She shook her head, her hair brushing lightly against his shoulder in a way that made his whole body tingle. Wrong wrong _wrong_ moment for that. “They might have to be forced to go live with that man again. I’m sure they'll end up running away, but...” A heavy sigh escaped her, full of that anguish he’d heard earlier. “It’s not as though they’ll need to worry about monsters or anything, but they’re so _young.”_

“Yours and Serah’s ages, right? From when your mother died.” When Lightning made a questioning sound, he elaborated, “Vanille told me.”

“...Yes.” She sighed again. “That young. And nobody should have to worry about anything at that age except schoolwork and friends. They deserve to have a family that looks out for them. And now they’ll either have to endure hell or struggle every day. Or both.”

“Will they come back to you?” he asked. “Like for protection or something?”

“I doubt it. Usually when a case is lost, the victim loses confidence in us and says they’ll be better off alone. I don’t blame them for thinking that, but...”

“It must be hard.”

“The looks on their faces when they realized they’d lost,” she whispered. “I’ll never forget it. I just...”

Her voice noticeably wavered as she buried her face in her hands again. Hope watched her for a long moment, hating that she felt the need to hide her tears in front of her husband. Well, he wasn’t quite her husband, but even so – he wanted Lightning to be comfortable being vulnerable around him. Though maybe it wasn’t just him – maybe after all this time, she still didn’t like showing that side of her to anyone.

Whatever the reason, he knew in his heart of hearts that she could always be comfortable with him – any version of him.

He wordlessly lifted his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders, sort of tugging her into himself. Whether it surprised her or not, he had no idea, but she leaned into him easily, burying her face in his chest as his arm tightened around her. He gently rested his chin on the top of her head, making no comment about her quiet sobs or the wet spots he could soon feel soaking his shirt.

Whatever she needed, he would be there, for as long as she needed _him._

–--

Eventually, exhaustion won out and he knew she was asleep by her deep, even breathing. Hope had stared at her for a long time as she slept against his chest, tear tracks lining her face but otherwise looking so calm and serene. He tried to remember if he’d ever seen her look like that during their nights as l’cie, but came up short.

He lay her down after awhile, making sure the pillow was nice and fluffed up, and tiptoed out of the room. He hadn’t wanted to wake her, so he’d read a couple of novels before the house grew dark and he’d realized she was conked out for the night. A bit of extra sleep would do her good, he figured.

When he woke up the next day, his legs dangling off the couch, he heard the sound of the shower running before he realized that Lightning was up. He checked his phone – six in the morning. A bit earlier than either of them usually woke up, but that was understandable.

The events of last night suddenly came to mind and he decided to do something nice for her. After rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he got up from the couch with a grunt and headed to the kitchen to brew some coffee and toast a bagel. Not the most luxurious breakfast, but hopefully she’d find it nice to relax a bit before tackling the day – especially since it was one of her work from home days. Though, as he brought the plate with the bagel (which was slathered with both butter _and_ cream cheese) and the mug to the bedroom, he wondered if she’d take a day off. Clearly she deserved it.

It didn’t hit him until after he’d set breakfast down on her nightstand that the shower was no longer running. He turned when the bathroom door open, steam clouding his vision before he was met with the sight of Lightning in a towel.

He gasped, looking everywhere _but_ her, even though his eyes wanted to stray so badly it was practically painful. “I, uh, brought you some breakfast. If you want something else, I can, um...you know, go to the kitchen. Yeah.”

“Hope.”

He wanted to look so damn bad, but he just _couldn’t._ It was one thing to offer her comfort when she desperately needed it, but it was another thing entirely to open ogle another man’s wife...even if that other man was him.

But still!

Her footsteps were quiet as she padded across the floor, stopping in front of him. Now he glanced at her, but still didn’t look her in the eye or...anywhere else. Certainly not at the drops of water sliding over her collarbone or her bare legs glistening in the light...

“I’ll just, um - ”

“Wait.” She reached out and touched his arm, stopping him from going anywhere...not that he really wanted to. “I didn’t thank you. For yesterday, I mean.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat, still averting her gaze. And her. “It’s okay. I mean, you needed me, so I was there.”

Her hand tightened on his arm ever-so-slightly, just enough to calm his physical jitters. It did nothing for the jitters in his heart.

“Hope.”

Why did she want him to look at her so badly?

When she called his name again, he was forced to finally meet her eyes. To his surprise, she looked frustrated, of all things. Was she still upset about yesterday? Maybe getting all of the emotion out of the equation now allowed her to think more logically.

But no – he realized a minute later that the frustration was aimed at _him._

This was too much. He had to keep up this wall – the one that would never let him get close to Lightning like a husband should have. This wasn’t his world, this wasn’t his _life._ Everything he did was under the assumption that eventually he would find a way back to his own time.

He could do nothing that would bring lasting consequences.

Lightning abruptly dropped her hand and went to the closet, yanking the door open. He turned around when he realized she was picking out clothes, and before he knew it, she was in front of him again, dressed in an oversized tank top, a sports bra, and leggings.

“I need to go for a run,” she said. “Just...I just need to get out of here for awhile.”

“Oh.” He let out a long breath. “Okay. Do you just run around the neighborhood or...?”

“Yes. There’s a running path a couple blocks from here. I’ll probably be awhile.”

“All right.” He hesitated, feeling an odd urge to ask if he could join her. Hope did do some jogging once in awhile, but his exercise of choice was usually practicing drills with his boomerang.

Which, of course, did not exist in this world.

“Have a good time,” he said after a pause. “I’ll be here.”

She nodded, but didn’t move just yet, and still stared at him. Before he could ask if something was wrong, Lightning suddenly stood on her tiptoes and cupped the back of his neck, bringing him down for a kiss.

It was just a quick, simple press of their mouths, but his eyes flew open when she pulled away, wondering if he looked as freaked as he felt.

If he did, Lightning made no comment, except for, “I’ll be back.”

It wasn’t until she left the room and he heard the front door open and close that he kind of stumbled off to the side. He felt a need to hold onto something, anything, and gripped Lightning’s nightstand, where the bagel and coffee seemed to mock him. His heart was positively _racing._

This was bad. This was so, so, soooooo bad. His imagination couldn't have prepared him for the feeling of her lips on his.

“Oh _shit,_ _”_ he breathed out.

Kissing Lightning was everything he’d ever dreamed it would be.

–--

When he heard the front door open, Hope could’ve sworn that his heart suddenly sped up double-time. He had no doubt it was Lightning, despite the fact that she’d been gone for hours. It was already past noon and he was in the kitchen, deciding what to make for lunch and not making much progress.

Truthfully, he’d been glad she was gone for so long, although any longer and he would have started getting worried. It gave him time to get his act together.

Or try to, anyway, because when Lightning suddenly appeared in the doorway, he knew that whatever time to himself he’d had hadn’t been enough. He was on hyper alert, just _waiting_ for her to get slightly too close.

It didn’t help that she was, of course, still in her running clothes. They were plastered to her body and thin sheen of sweat glistened on her skin. He wondered if anyone else in the world looked so gorgeous after ‘going on a run’ for half the day.

Their eyes met, sizing each other up. She seemed almost surprised by his presence, but at the same time, she looked...decompressed. Clearly whatever running she’d done had helped take the edge off of what she was feeling. That was definitely a good thing, at least.

“Um...” He quickly looked away and cleared his throat. “I was just about to make something. In the mood for lunch?”

“Maybe later.” Instead, she headed to the fridge and slowly got out a bottle of water.

“Oh. Okay.” He moved out of her way, busying himself with putting the twist tie back on a loaf of bread. “Just...let me know.”

She hummed in response, staring at her water bottle but not opening it. They both shifted as though to walk and then stopped at the same time. Dear gods, this was awkward. His team at the Academy had often said he was charismatic. He wondered if they’d laugh if they saw him now.

He cleared his throat again. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes.” She twisted the cap on the water bottle, but still didn’t open it. “How was your morning?”

“Fine. I talked to Snow and Serah on their break. Serah told me awhile back that she’d try to see if Noel and Yeul knew anything about what was going on with me.”

“Oh.” Lightning bit her lip. He wasn’t staring. He _wasn’t._ “Has she gotten in touch with them?”

“Not yet.” And he’d be really, really, desperately hoping that she _had_ and that whoever Noel and Yeul were here (whoever they were, period), they would somehow magically figure out a way for him to get back to his own world and time. Because after this morning, he needed an out. _Now._ He’d always admired and had feelings for Lightning, but any longer here and he’d end up doing something he’d regret.

Not that the Rightful Hope would blame him, he was sure. But even so, he knew that being here was unfair to both him and Lightning. She deserved the person who had been through the apparent hell the Crystal Age was. And he didn’t want to touch her and _fall_ for her when it seemed inevitable that he’d be ripped away from this world anyway.

He didn’t want to lose her all over again.

“Listen, Hope,” she said, sounding weirdly nervous. “About this morning...”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said quickly. Thinking about that kiss was killing him. “It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”

That was definitely the wrong thing to say, because she set the water bottle down with a _smack_ and lifted her head, jaw clenched and her eyes flashing. “It _is_ a big deal. I miss my _husband.”_

He winced, the confirmation that they were basically on the same page hurting a lot more than he’d thought it would. “I know you do. I wish I could...” He stopped fiddling with the bread. “I wish I could fix this, Light. I wish this was something I could simply research for awhile to find the answer.”

“I understand that you don’t remember what led you to this point. What led _us_ here,” she said, her voice a mixture of sadness and impatience. “But what I don’t understand is why you won’t try with me _now.”_

His eyes snapped to hers. “What?”

“What if you never get your memories back, or fix whatever paradox you’re so convinced this is? What if this world is it for you?” She crossed her arms under her chest. “Do you even want me?”

“Of _course_ I do,” he blurted out, wanting to reach out and hold her, but thought better of it. “I always have. And it’s strange for me to be here in a world where I don’t need to find a way to save you.”

“So...what, then?” Her jaw was clenched. “You can’t handle being here? Are you going to leave me?”

“Never.” In this or any world, that was the utmost truth of his life. Leaving Lightning Farron alone forever was _never_ an option for him.

But he had to admit that she had a point – what if they never fixed whatever was wrong with his head, or got the Rightful Hope back? Would he just continue to keep her at arms length forever?

“Then I don’t know what you want from me.” She wrapped her arms even more tightly around herself.

“I just...I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re doing a pretty bad job of that.”

He knew that was true. He knew he’d probably hurt Lightning in dozens of unintentional ways since he’d woken up here. Every single time was a sting to his heart.

All he’d wanted to do in the years between Cocoon’s fall and the time he remembered was find her again. Yes, he’d wanted to save Fang and Vanille and figure out where the others had disappeared to. He’d wanted to help lead society into a better future.

But if was totally honest with himself, finding Lightning had always been his top priority, the thing he would choose if forced to pick one goal. She probably wouldn’t have agreed with that choice, but it was the one his heart wanted.

Yet now, in this new world that had everything he’d never known he’d wanted, that choice had been made _for_ him. There was no fighting for it, no research to be done, no centuries to cross. All he had to do was sit back and enjoy.

But he _couldn’t._ This life wasn’t _his._

As he’d gotten older, Hope had learned to control his emotions better, especially as the Academy became established and he grew more well-known. But right now, everything that had been simmering within him suddenly felt like it was on fire and he just wanted to _explode._

“I have to get out of here,” he blurted out, suddenly hurrying out of the kitchen. Maybe he’d go for a walk or find that running trail or just _something_ , any place at all where confusion and frustration wasn’t floating around him like a cloud.

And then caught sight of Lightning’s face as he passed her.

Her eyes were wide and she actually looked _scared_. It wasn’t a look he would have ever associated with her – but he remembered the story she’d told, of how she’d almost been left alone at the end until he reached out.

He did just that now, daring himself to gently grip her shoulders. “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “I’m coming back. Okay?”

The reassurance worked and she visibly relaxed, but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until she gave him a slight nod that he squeezed her shoulders a bit and _then_ turned to leave.

Where he went didn’t matter. Apparently, he’d always find his way back to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you as always for your comments! they always brighten my week :3


	8. Chapter 8

Hope ended up finding a park with a swingset and a kind of playhouse, with slides and a jungle gym. There was nobody around in the middle of the day and the nearest house was at least three blocks over. Even though he was much too tall, he managed to scramble up the jungle gym and hid inside one of the hollow plastic squares that made up the playhouse.

And then he buried his face in his elbow and _screamed._

The noise sounded weirdly spooky as it echoed off the plastic. Had anyone heard him, they might have thought someone was dying in there.

Maybe he was...dying of a broken heart, that was.

It was so _unfair._ He was trying to keep Rightful Hope’s marriage intact, but damn if it didn’t feel like it was _his_ marriage that was stressed to the breaking point.

“It’s not fair,” he said, the words muffled by his elbow, but then he lifted his head, bonking his head against the plastic and shouting into the echo, “It’s not _fair!”_

He wished so badly that he could just take this for what it was and forget about the memories of his own time. Maybe he was _supposed_ to be here. If he could just forget about the Rightful Hope, all of this would be so easy.

Falling for Lightning without anything else in their way would be the easiest thing in the world.

“I don’t know what to do.” That was a new one for him. Hope was so used to being the smartest guy in the room and having all the answers – or at least a way to _get_ the answers. Here, he was adrift in a way he hadn’t felt since being branded as a l’cie. And sure, he had the others reaching out to pull him to shore, but it wasn’t enough.

No matter what he did, it felt like they were looking for the wrong guy.

That thought brought him to tears, and he covered his eyes with his arm, his shoulders heaving. It didn’t seem right at all that he was so upset in this world where he had everything and every _one_ he’d ever wanted. Maybe it was because he’d missed how they’d all gotten here. Lightning could tell him stories until they were blue in the face, but that didn’t change that he’d missed out on the experience.

And that was why he believed there was a Rightful Hope out there that wasn’t him. Surely if he’d experienced that same end of the world, those same horrors and triumphs, a part of him would just _know._ Instead he just had...nothing.

He cried for that loss. He sobbed for everything he and Lightning had gone through. The tears just kept coming and coming in a way he couldn’t _ever_ remember happening. Hope had never been the sort of guy to just _sob,_ but perhaps the Rightful Hope was and now he was just experiencing that because of this body.

Who knew? Not him. Nothing felt right anymore.

Except for one thing...

He had no idea how many minutes or hours had passed since he’d left, but when he finally scrambled out of the playhouse, his eyes red and itchy, the sun was hanging lower in the sky, not set but getting there. Hours had passed, then, and he was still no closer to any answers than he had been. He wondered if he would ever find them.

There was one thing he _did_ know, however.

He just wanted to go home.

Luckily his sense of direction wasn’t too bad and he managed to find the way. A sense of relief washed over him as he walked up the path to the front door, eager to see Lightning all of a sudden.

She was sitting in the room she was using as an office, staring into space. There were a couple of pencils that had been snapped in half, the pieces scattered on the desk and floor.

“Hey,” he said, his voice hoarse. It definitely looked and sounded like he’d been crying, but he didn’t care.

Instead of answering, she grabbed another pencil and toyed with it for a second before she snapped it in half with zero preamble. “This is stupid. I know it’s a waste.” She dropped the pencil halves on the floor. “But it’s stress relief.”

She looked like how he felt – completely wrecked. But she also still looked so damn beautiful. No amount of the weirdness that’d been following them since he’d woken up had changed that. He was breathless every time he looked at her.

Right now included.

“I’m sorry.”

Lightning slowly got to her feet, her face a careful mask. Anyone else might have thought she was angry or ready to throw a punch.

Hope saw an invitation.

He crossed the space between them, their arms reaching out like they’d done just that a million times, and pulled her into a hug. It was still so strange being _taller_ than her. He’d thought so ever since that first hug, but now it was even more apparent when they held onto each other so tightly. He was able to rest his chin on her head, leaving no space at all between them.

It felt amazing. Like _home._

So why couldn’t it be? Why couldn’t he just let himself have this?

As though she could tell what he was thinking, Lightning squeezed him a little more tightly, her fingers gripping his shirt like a lifeline. It was everything he’d ever wanted since that very first hug when they were l’cie, so long ago.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Sorry for so much, but he was especially sorry for fighting with his wife. Yes, she was Rightful Hope’s wife, but for one damn minute he just wasn’t going to think about it too hard.

“Me too.” Lightning’s voice was muffled, her face buried in his shoulder. They stood like that for a long time, occasionally rocking back and forth slightly, neither one of them willing to leave such a perfect embrace.

“Was that our first fight?” Hope asked curiously.

She shook her head. Her hands had loosened their grip on his shirt and she slowly drifted them up and down his back. It was extremely distracting. “We got into a stupid argument about cake frosting once.”

He pulled away slightly, just enough to look at her, eyebrows raised in confusion. “Cake frosting? Why?”

“It was dumb. We couldn’t agree on what flavor was best for...”

It was only when her cheeks turned pink that he realized what she was insinuating. _“Oh.”_ He blushed practically to the roots of his hair. “I...I see.”

Whether it was from his reaction or just the memory of the ‘fight,’ Lightning simply chuckled and pulled him close again, this time resting her head on his shoulder. Logically, he knew the hug had to end sometime, but he was extremely reluctant to be the first one to pull away.

Somehow they both did at the same time and she looked up at him with that soft, tender expression he’d come to associate with her in this world.

It wasn’t that he _couldn’t_ love her.

The big problem was that he already did.

“I’ve always wanted you, you know,” he said. Even if he’d mentioned it before, he needed her to know it was the truth. “I just don’t know how I can have you without feeling like I don’t deserve it.”

Her smile was tinged with sadness as she brushed his bangs off his sweaty forehead. “Maybe you’re just thinking too hard.”

“That’s usually the case with me.”

They soon reached a quiet truce and went to get ready for bed. Hope headed back to the couch and set up his blanket and pillows, but soon felt eyes on him. He whirled around and saw Lightning standing there, dressed in a camisole and pajama shorts. The shorts were juuuust low enough to show off her abs, but of course there were her legs and arms and the temptation of all that _skin._

He was fairly sure it wasn’t an accident.

“Did you want to sleep in the bed tonight?” She sounded hopeful. “With me?”

He managed to tear his eyes from her, fists clenched in his blanket. Given her tone, it sounded like she truly did just want to sleep next to him, keep him close.

But...

“I can’t,” he managed to say. _I can’t have you_ , was what he thought.

He had never resented a fact more than that one.

–--

Things were better after that. Certainly not _normal,_ considering he wasn’t the Rightful Hope and he still felt a bit like an outsider in this world, but the days were becoming much nicer for them.

At least now Lightning knew that yes, he _did_ very much want her. It was his memories or this paradox or whatever that was the issue, definitely not her. That knowledge stopped them from having any more arguments about it.

What it didn’t stop was the flirting.

Perhaps that wasn’t quite the right word, but it seemed that now Lightning knew for sure that he had an interest in her, she’s taken it upon herself to constantly see just how close she could get to him. And damnit all to hell that he really, _really_ liked it.

Surely Rightful Hope wouldn’t hold it against him, right? As long as he didn’t actually _do_ anything about it, everything was fine.

Then again, it was getting harder and harder to keep himself in control. Pun intended. Over the past few days, Lightning seemed to take great delight in brushing her hand over the small of his back, a spot that just _happened_ to be ridiculously sensitive on him, or leaning over to tell him something as they watched a movie, her lips stupidly close to his ear.

He was going crazy.

Reading helped keep his mind in the right place, so to speak. He’d slowly been working his way through that big bookcase in the living room, and one morning, as he was halfway through the novel he’d started last night, Lightning waltzed in and sat down next to him on the couch, hair brushing his cheek as she looked over his shoulder.

When her hand rested on his back, gently tracing random patterns, he finally lowered the book and glanced at her. “Yes?”

She smirked, as she always did when he clearly didn’t call her out on her flirty or being touchy-feely. Honestly, sometimes Hope wasn’t quite sure how to interact with the Lightning in this world. She was much more open with her emotions than he remembered, and just seemed a lot more comfortable being herself.

“That’s a romance novel,” she said. “Getting any ideas?”

“Just that if the sassy best friend went through with her plan like she _said_ she was going to, this book would have half as many pages.”

“No fun in that, though.”

“I guess.” He stuck the scrap paper he’d been using as a bookmark in between the pages and set the book aside. “Taking a break?”

“Serah called. She finally got a hold of Noel and Yeul.”

His heart leaped. Everything else he could possibly have thought of in terms of finding answers – or even an explanation – had only given him dead ends. He’d done as much research as he was able, because the internet in this world was _amazing_ compared to the technology they had back in his time, but even all of the amazingness had lead him nowhere. Searches for ‘alternate universe’ or ‘time travel’ or ‘paradox’ on only given him information on unfamiliar movies and TV shows and some game about life being strange.

“Do you think they’ll be able to help?”

“I don’t know. They’re ordinary people in this world, after all. But Yeul’s pretty perceptive about some things, even though she’s not a seeress.”

“I guess we’ll see.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “How long until we can pay them a visit?”

“A couple of days. Apparently they were out of service on some off the grid vacation, so I want to give them a chance to collect themselves.”

“Gotcha.” He wondered why he felt oddly antsy about seeing them. Maybe it was because he didn’t really know them, aside from the photos in the album, and it’d be his first time meeting people who were strangers to him but knew about his place on his world.

So weird.

Lightning’s hand slid down his back and stopped. “...Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

She took her hand off of him and kind of crossed her arms on her knees, leaning forward a bit. “Why are you so sure that this is a paradox? Or that you’re otherwise not supposed to be here?”

Despite everything, she’d never stopped pushing the ‘lost memories’ angle. Somehow she was convinced it couldn’t be anything else.

Maybe it was a result of the particular time his memory gap was and the world he’d come from, but he just felt like it couldn’t be that simple. Not to mention... “It’s a little hard for me, still, to think that things could be this calm. That _I_ could be so calm and happy, even if it’s what I was working towards.”

“But you _were_ working towards it. It’s not so unbelievable that you could have actually attained what you wanted, right?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head a little.

“Plus...” She rested a hand on his knee. “Have I or your parents so far told you anything that doesn’t match up to what you know? Before the memory loss, I mean.”

He hesitated. “No.”

“Then why can’t it just be your memories?”

Panic rose from deep in his gut. “Because it’s just not. That – it’d be too _easy._ There’s a Rightful Hope that belongs here and it’s not me.”

She frowned. “If you’re so sure about that, then why do you have that scar on your chest from when I saved you?”

“Because...because that’s just how this paradox works,” he said, clasping his hands together to hide that they were shaking. “I’ve heard that some people disappear completely, but clearly in this case, it was just the mind or soul. Maybe because of the different worlds.”

“You’re reaching.” She shook her head, more in frustration than her disagreeing with him. “I just don’t know _why.”_

He wondered about that, too. Over the years, he’d been taught to open his mind to every possibility. Set your sight on one path and you could miss a thousand others.

This was different. Maybe it was just self-defense on his part.

“Light...”

“If you’re so sure you’re a different person,” she said, nodding towards his left hand, “then why are you wearing another man’s wedding ring?”

Hope unclasped his fingers and lifted up his hand. The ring gleamed in the sun that streamed through the windows. “I...”

They were both quiet for a minute, and when he didn’t continue, Lightning patted his knee. “I get it. You’ve been through a lot.” She paused, then sighed a little, adding so quietly that he barely heard her, “...A lot.”

He didn’t say anything. Clearly there were things in the past that had happened to him that she’d never mentioned, either because she hadn’t been privy to it or because she’d felt no reason to tell him. It wasn’t the first time she’d alluded to such a thing.

But still, he wondered.

“I wish we could get out of here for awhile,” she suddenly said. “A vacation or something. From the sound of it, Noel and Yeul had a good time at theirs.”

“Maybe we could,” he replied. “I’d like to see more of this world.”

There was a long pause before she answered him. “Maybe eventually. You were supposed to be saving up your time off at work before this happened. And I need mine for...something later.” A distracted look crossed her face as she stared at nothing, clearly thinking hard about something.

He bumped his shoulder against hers. “Light?”

“Don’t worry about it.” She abruptly stood up. “I need to get back to work, but Serah also invited us over for dinner when she called. We haven’t seen them for awhile, so I figured it was okay.”

Hope hadn’t seen them at all since waking up here, but he knew better than to point that out. “Sure. That sounds nice.”

She nodded and headed back down the hall, her slippered feet barely making a sound on the hardwood floor. Hope wondered, not for the first time, if something was wrong beyond the obvious. He knew better than to pry, though.

Maybe she would share her thoughts when they could fix this...except if he was right, he would go back to his own time and place and not hear her voice again for a long, long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> halfway through ahhhhhhhhhh
> 
> thank you as always for your comments! I love them and I love you all :D


	9. Chapter 9

“Uncle Hope!!!”

Hope barely had time to react before a blur with blonde hair collided with his leg. It probably didn’t bode well that his first instinct was to completely flail around like an idiot.

“Rosa!”

Though he’d only visited Serah in New Bodhum a handful of times before she’d disappeared – on a time travel journey, he now knew – the sound of her voice still filled him with relief that she wasn’t completely gone. They’d spoken on the phone, of course, but hearing it in person made his relief more intense, somehow.

Despite all the phone calls, he’d somehow forgotten about Rosa – his niece, he randomly realized for the first time. And he was her favorite person? Ugh, now he just felt like an ass.

“Rosa!” Serah suddenly appeared with her hands on her hips, looking very much like the part of ‘Meanie Miss Farron’, as her students had called her during one of his New Bodhum visits. “What did I tell you about Uncle Hope?”

Rosa tilted her head all the way back so that she was looking at him. She was still hugging his leg. “Is it true that you hurt your head?”

“Uh.” He hadn’t really expected the kid to find out, but he supposed it was inevitable. He glanced at Lightning, who was watching him with a surprisingly curious expression, and Serah, who was raising an eyebrow at her daughter.

Geez, hadn’t he had enough awkwardness for one day?

“Daddy said it went smack and now you can’t remember a lot of stuff.”

Trust Snow to explain it like _that._

Before he even really realized what he was doing, Hope knelt down to Rosa’s height and ruffled her hair, which she grinned at. “He’s right. I hit my head and now a lot of my memories are missing.” Never mind that that wasn't exactly how it had happened, but he was fairly sure a five-year old wouldn't understand the meaning of a paradox.

“Is it scary?”

He sighed. “Very.”

“How’re you gonna get them back?”

“I’ve got some friends helping me. Don’t you worry, okay?”

“Okay!” She grinned. “If you forget something, I’ll remind you, ‘kay?”

“Perfect.” He smiled back.

Rosa took that as a sign to hug him again – around his neck this time – before she flung her arms away and started running through the house yelling, “DAAAADDDYYYY! UNCLE HOPE’S HEEEERRRE!”

Serah closed her eyes and shook her head before she finally went up to greet them. “Glad you guys could make it! It’s been awhile, huh?”

“Feels like a lifetime,” Lightning said quietly.

If Serah noticed that something was up, she didn’t comment, but instead led them further into the house. It was a little bigger than his and Lightning’s home, but still felt comfortable and welcoming. He recognized a couple of photos on the wall from the album, and of course there were tons of Rosa.

“Yo! Heard two of my favorite people were here!”

It’d been many years since Hope had seen Snow. He’d been among the first to disappear and he’d only seen the guy once while visiting New Bodhum.

But clearly after all that time and a whole new world, the guy hadn’t changed a bit.

He was still as tall as ever, obvious even when he came into the room all hunched over from giving Rosa a piggyback ride. The most startling thing was that he wasn’t wearing a beanie – of course he hadn't been in the wedding pictures, but seeing it in person was still a shock to his system. Even so, the guy was still unmistakable.

“Do you have two more favorites?” Serah teased.

“You know it, baby,” Snow replied with a grin, leaning down further to smooch his wife despite Rosa’s protests. He chuckled and knelt down so she could slide off his back, only going to Hope when she was safely on the floor. “Hope! How’s it going? Any luck?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“We’re hoping that Noel and Yeul can shed some light,” Lightning said. “Thanks for finally getting hold of them.”

Serah smiled, beckoning them into the kitchen, where Hope suddenly realized that he could smell something amazing. “It’s the least I could do! He said he would’ve responded earlier, but the service was really bad where they were. I think he just likes being off the grid because it reminds him of being a hunter in the Crystal Age.”

“Maybe,” Lightning said quietly. She seemed lost in thought, and judging from the way Snow was raising his eyebrows, it was clear that Hope wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

That could wait after dinner, and what a dinner it was. The things Lightning had been cooking were really good – perhaps he was biased since anything would have been delicious after months of dehydrated Academy rations – but the pot roast Serah put on the table was _phenomenal._ It was pretty much all he could do not to shovel his portion in like a starving animal.

“Wow, Hope,” Snow teased. “I didn’t think anybody could appreciate Serah’s cooking more than me.”

“It’s amazing,” he said between mouthfuls. “I don’t think I’ve had anything like this since I was a teenager. There’s definitely nothing home-cooked at the Academy.”

What he said didn’t quite register until he realized it’d gone quiet. Lightning was staring at her plate and Serah and Snow were looking at him in confusion. Only Rosa was oblivious and was happily making an igloo out of her mashed potatoes.

It was finally Serah who broke the ice. “I...I made this last month.” Her gaze flicked to Lightning for a second. “I knew you were serious about how bad it was, but...”

All of them fell silent. Even though he knew it wasn’t true, Hope felt a little like Snow and Serah were judging him. Maybe seeing and hearing about how extreme this memory loss or paradox or whatever it was just hit the nail on the head.

He suddenly hated Rightful Hope for leaving him here to all this awkwardness and the pain he was clearly causing Lightning. Sure, it was likely that the guy wasn’t just floating around like a ghost, waiting for the moment to take his life back...not to mention that of course, in all technicalities, he and Rightful Hope were the same person.

But if he had to come to this world, why couldn’t he be equipped with the memories to go with it?

When the silence was too awkward for him to handle anymore, he blurted out, “Let’s talk about something else for now, okay?”

The others seemed to agree and Snow launched into a story about one of the teams he coached, while Serah asked for advice about what to do about one of her students, the conversation peppered with comments from Rosa talking about a princess movie. If they ignored the elephant in the room, it was pretty nice.

But he couldn’t help but notice that Lightning barely looked up from her plate.

–--

“So, uh, is something wrong with Light?”

Hope rinsed the plate he’d been washing with a sigh. After dinner, Snow had announced he and Hope would be on cleanup duty, which was clearly appreciated since it was obvious Lightning wanted to talk to Serah alone. Even with the water running, he could occasionally hear their murmurs and Rosa’s nonsense as she played with some dolls.

“I don’t know.” It didn’t occur to him to lie or fudge the truth. Besides Lightning and Vanille, Snow was oddly the next person he’d grown closest to during their trials as l’cie. Maybe that was why the guy’s eventual disappearance hit him so hard. “We had sort of a weird conversation earlier today.”

“About your head, I’m guessing?”

“Yes.” He let his hands rest in the sudsy water for a second before continuing the dishes. “She’s convinced it’s memory loss. I’m not so sure.”

“What makes you think it’s not?”

“That’s what she asked too. But you know, if everybody’s so sure that I just have amnesia, why get a former seeress involved?”

Snow paused. “Yeul, you mean?”

“Right. What can she do that a doctor can’t?”

“Nooo idea,” Snow admitted with a chuckle. “I think Serah suggested getting in touch with them because Yeul’s probably the one who remembers the most about the Crystal Age. There’s been a seeress reborn every generation since even before Fang and Vanille’s time or something.”

“Since before the War of Transgression?” The researcher in Hope was suddenly excited, like a dog presented with a treat. “We’ve found information that the Farseers flourished around when Fang and Vanille’s childhood would’ve been. There haven’t been any other artefacts suggesting they came even before all that.” He idly scrubbed at a pan, musing, “Though I suppose it’s theoretically possible, given how much older Pulse is than Cocoon. One of my assistants found some old writings saying that Yeul was the ‘first human’, but it’s hard to know whether they mean literally or it’s a translation error. Or perhaps just a reference to her powers. That might explain some of the strange energy I felt in some of the artefacts I've found. One of them might have been thousands of years old, but I could still feel power coming from it.”

Surprisingly, Snow had stayed quiet during all of that rambling, but when Hope finally paused for breath he asked, “Is Lightning okay with that?”

“Okay with what?”

“You talking like that.” Snow waved a hand. “You’re acting like you’re gonna pop back to the time that you remember any day now.”

Hope frowned. “I don’t mean it in any sort of bad way,” he replied slowly. “It’s just...that’s what I remember. And it makes me feel like I don’t belong in this world.”

“What if it’s nothing that those guys can help with?” Snow said, obviously referring to Yeul and Noel. He stacked some clean dishes on the drying rack. “What if it’s just your memory and you do whatever you gotta do to get it fixed?”

“Then...things will go back to normal, I guess.”

“So why not believe that’s gonna happen? We’ve all been through way too much shit. Nobody even thinks about stuff like time travel and magic and whatever anymore.”

“Because...” Hope tried to think of a good way to explain. He may have trusted Snow and thought of him as a dear friend in any world, but the guy was kinda thick. “Because even in a world as calm as this, I don’t think something can be that easy. If it’s just my memories, fine, but if it’s something more, then...” Automatically, he glanced in the direction of the living room, where Lightning and Serah were still murmuring. “...Then Light deserves to have her real husband back.”

To his surprise, Snow barked out a laugh. “ _That’s_ what you’re worried about?”

“One of many, but yes.”

“Man, you gotta relax.” He shook his head with a chuckle. “I remember how close you guys were when you were a kid. And when it was the end and we came to this world, I saw her holding out her arms for you. I’m pretty sure she’ll have you no matter how screwed up your head is.”

Not for the first time, Hope wished that his memories lined up with everyone else’s, that he’d seen what they had and experienced those moments. It made his stomach churn to think that that either he was missing them or had never had them in the first place since he wasn’t the Rightful Hope.

“Okay, but say this is indeed a paradox and I’m not the version of myself that’s supposed to be here,” Hope said. “Don’t you think the real version would get angry if I was with his wife?”

“Dunno, man,” Snow said, which was incredibly unhelpful until he added, “I’d think any version of you would want Light to be happy. And it’s pretty obvious that you’ve always had a thing for her. Now you just get to love her as your wife.” He grinned. “And trust me, loving your wife is _never_ a bad thing.”

This surprising insight startled Hope so much that he barely had the mind to finish the dishes and was shooed out of the kitchen as a result. He stayed fairly quiet as he hugged Rosa goodnight and said goodbye to Snow and Serah. Lightning seemed contemplative too, and they didn’t really talk as she drove them home.

He knew that none of this was a question of fidelity on Lightning’s mind. She was convinced he _was_ the Rightful Hope, not a different one sent from a paradox.

So the only thing stopping him from loving her the way she deserved...was him.

What would the Rightful Hope think? Snow was convinced that any version of him wouldn’t mind, but he wondered.

Even after he hugged Lightning goodnight and settled in on the couch, he still wondered. The what-ifs and what-nows and what he could possibly do to make things right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot happens in the next chapter ;D
> 
> thank you as always for your comments! they always make me happy~


	10. Chapter 10

“You...are _mine.”_

Crystal that shone brighter than the sun. An unfamiliar, terrifying face that repeated in the reflection, surrounding him.

“You will be my vessel.”

Lightning was there, but then she vanished. Always out of reach. Always out of sight. It was the worst kind of teasing, because it tortured his soul.

“This world is... _impure.”_

The voice was loud with an echo that rattled him to his very bones. Terror engulfed him. He was moving, but the strings of fate that held his arms told him that this was not his doing.

It wasn’t him. _It’s not me,_ he tried to shout, but no words came out.

Snow, Sazh, Fang, Vanille, Noel – they all appeared in a literal flash, heads bowed down, until a bright light made them disappear. He held them in his hands, moved by the puppeteer.

“We will _save_ them.”

Lightning was there again, but her back was turned and he could only see her profile. Her eyes were wide, panicked, but it was like she couldn’t see him. She had no idea that he was coming closer.

“By _destroying_ them.”

It would be only them. She would be his goddess, molded into the perfection he craved. Nothing else mattered.

_No..._

“This eternity is our _right.”_

_No!_

“No!”

Hope struggled against the bonds that held him, wanting to break free, wanting – _needing_ – to get to Lightning so they could save everyone. But the more he struggled, the more he was _trapped_ and there was nothing he could do, for his friends or himself or her -

His struggle led him right off the couch with a loud thump.

He blinked what felt like a million times as he stared at the ceiling from his back, disoriented and gasping for air. His heart was pounding like it was trying to escape and he honestly wondered if he was about to faint from the stress.

A few seconds later, he heard footsteps hurrying down the hall and suddenly Lightning was right next to him, her eyes wide with panic as she knelt down and gently shook him. “Hope? Can you hear me?”

“It was my fault,” he gasped, only the awkward position he was lying down in keeping him from thrashing around. “I let him in, I wasn’t strong enough, I hurt everyone and they almost didn’t make it - ”

“Hope.” Lightning tried to help him up, but his heart raced at her touch and he scrambled to his feet, hands shaking violently. He wasn’t entirely sure that he still wasn’t dreaming, especially since it all felt so _real._ Those strings on his hands, the light of his friends, the feeling of darkness encompassing everything, the only way to attain such purity.

It was all because of him.

“I...I...”

“Hey.” Her panicked expression had, for some reason, softened into one of understanding. Now she didn’t hesitate in wrapping her arms around him, cupping the back of his head so that he could lean his forehead on her shoulder. The angle was a bit awkward, but it was perfect. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Before he even realized what was happening, he gasped out a sob, tears pricking his eyes. He hugged Lightning back almost urgently, like holding onto her would keep him grounded. Keep the nightmares away.

They stood there for a long time, her hand slowly stroking his hair as the tremors wracking his body gradually subsided. When he finally calmed down somewhat, he felt weary right down to his very bones.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse and muffled by her shoulder.

“Don’t be,” she replied. She stopped long enough to ease them both onto the couch, then immediately pulled him in her arms again.

“I just – I don’t know what - ”

“Shhhh.”

He listened and hushed, trying to calm his breathing instead. It was clear by how she hummed a vaguely familiar, soothing tune and gently stroked his hair that she was used to this, which somehow just made him feel even more guilty. Surely if Rightful Hope had excruciating nightmares like this, he himself wouldn’t have been subjected to them, being from another time and world and all. He could have saved Lightning the worry.

Apparently that wasn’t the case.

“You haven’t had one of those in years,” she murmured what felt like hours later.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Stop saying that.”

“...Sorry.”

She huffed, but just continued holding him, which helped more then he wanted to admit. Eventually, he managed to find it in him to lift his head from her shoulder, but they otherwise didn’t loosen their embrace. She studied his face carefully, like she was trying to figure out if he would freak out again, but luckily the last wisps of fog from the nightmare had finally disappeared and now he was just exhausted.

Her fingers brushed aside his bangs and he couldn’t help but lean into the touch. A faint smile crossed her face. “Can I get you a drink?”

He nodded, not quite trusting himself to talk. When she got up and headed to the kitchen, he wrapped his arms around himself, clearly missing hers.

There was some beeping in the distance and to his surprise, she returned a few minutes later with a mug of hot cocoa. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any – way before he’d become a l’cie. He murmured his thanks and took a sip as Lightning sat back down next to him.

“...Did you want to talk about it?” she asked after a long pause.

Instead of answering right away, he took another sip of cocoa. No surprise that it was really good. “It was terrifying,” he finally replied. “Like...some huge amount of darkness that was controlling me. All I wanted to do was bring you into that darkness. And I tried to destroy the others. I was fighting against it, but a huge part of me just wanted to _crush_ them, like they meant nothing.”

She listened to him patiently, not looking very surprised by anything he said. When he stopped talking, she sighed a little. “Bhunivelze.”

His blood ran cold. “That’s what it was like? When he...possessed me?”

“You didn’t really get possessed,” she said carefully. “It was more like...he was working through you. And for whatever reason, you couldn’t resist.”

While he was sure this would have made anyone else freak out, he realized that he felt slightly calmer at the explanation. Facts always made sense, and while he wasn’t one to totally shy away from emotions, he’d had to keep them in check for so long. Emotions had been dangerous for a l’cie, and as he grew into the leader of the Academy, he had to look calm and poised so the people would trust him and his decisions.

But even so...

“Why did I have that dream?” he mused. “In my mind, I haven’t gone through that experience.”

Lightning was quiet for a long moment before she answered. “Maybe it’s your memories trying to come back.”

He wasn’t sure what to think about that. While he still wasn’t entirely convinced that this was all just a memory issue, he had to keep looking at the facts. A nightmare like this was clearly something that the Rightful Hope should have been dealing with, so if _he_ had one...

“After we were all reborn here,” Lightning said, startling him out of his thoughts, “you had nightmares pretty often for awhile, at least after we got together. Almost a year.”

“Yeah?”

“You never told me what they were about. Not specifically.” She glanced at him for a second. “But I could guess.”

Of course, he’d had no way of knowing that Rightful Hope kept the details of his nightmares to himself, so he realized that offering up an explanation instead of brushing it off or saying he was fine...he’d given Lightning something that Rightful Hope never had.

Confirmation.

He let out a long, low breath and set his half-empty mug down before flopping against the couch. Lightning wrapped her arm around his shoulders and he sort of awkwardly folded himself against her, the two of them pressed together as the minutes ticked by.

Eventually, she patted his arm to get his attention. “Do you want to come to bed? Just to...I mean, if you don’t want to be alone on the couch...”

Her voice sounded so hesitant and hopeful, but he knew the answer before she’d even finished asking. “That’s okay. You go ahead and sleep, though. I know you’ve got work.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s fine, Light.” He managed a little smile. “I’ll be better in the morning.”

“I’m worried about you being better _now.”_ She huffed though, relenting, knowing that he’d probably remain stubborn about it.

They both sat up and looked at each other, hair mussed and clothes all rumpled. Hope was about to tell her to go to sleep, when she suddenly reached out and cupped his neck.

For a heartbeat, he wondered if she was going to kiss him. He didn’t want it to happen now, not like _this,_ when there was still a part of him that was confused and terrified.

But he knew he wouldn’t stop her.

Instead, she brought him close and tilted her head up a bit – the height difference obvious even when they were sitting down – and pressed a kiss to his forehead. She pulled back a couple of inches, her free hand brushing his bangs out of his face. “Come get me if you need anything.”

“Okay,” he whispered, knowing he wouldn’t.

She slowly moved her hands away, giving him one last look before she got up and walked down the hall to the bedroom. He didn’t lay back down until he heard the groan of the mattress in the distance.

He sighed and fluffed his pillow behind his head to idly stare up at the ceiling and wait for dawn.

–--

Hope was still awake when Lightning got up the next morning, but he kept his eyes closed and feigned sleep, just not wanting to deal with anything yet. Plus, he knew she had to be exhausted and the last thing either of them needed was stilted conversation before she had to work.

Instead, he listened to her sounds. He heard her quietly walk around the living room, pause a few times, and then take the mug off to the coffee table to the kitchen. There were the familiar sounds of the sink running, the coffeemaker brewing, the click of the toaster.

It was strangely relaxing. Peaceful. _Domestic._

He lay there, calm and steady as he heard her walk through the living room, pausing again, presumably to look at him. He didn’t dare move until he heard her footsteps disappear down the hall and then the scrape of the chair she used at her makeshift work station.

He slowly opened an eye in confusion, noting that it was still fairly early, around seven-thirty. Lightning usually didn’t start her work from home days until at least nine.

Maybe she couldn’t sleep last night either and just figured she’d get an early start. Maybe she wanted to catch up on a few things or had some extra work to do. All reasonable explanations.

But still...

When he started hearing voices – just murmurs, not loud enough to make out the words – he was finally compelled to get off the couch and quietly shuffled down the hallway. Honestly, he had no intention of spying on her; he just wanted to see if she was okay.

His footsteps slowed the closer he got to that room, stopping in surprise when he heard a familiar voice.

“Don’t you think you should tell him?”

_Serah?_

He frowned, silently moving a bit closer to peek inside the room. Luckily, he was standing in a way where he wasn’t immediately visible, but could still see inside well enough. And all he saw was Lightning sitting in front of her computer, postured slumped as she stared at the screen.

“I know. The right moment just hasn’t come up.”

“Honestly, sis. You think the right moment is just going to fall from the sky?”

There was Serah’s voice again, but it sounded weirdly tinny, like it was coming from a phone. He dared to peek into the room a little more and saw a blinking light at the top of the computer, suddenly realizing what was going on – a video call. An impressive piece of technology, really. She’d shown him how it worked last week when her boss needed to get an opinion on a new logo idea. For some reason, it had never occurred to him that such a thing could be used for personal reasons, but here they were.

And it was clear that they were talking about _him._

“No,” Lightning said slowly. “But it’s not just something you blurt out.”

“I get that.” Serah’s voice was a little more gentle now. “Even in a perfect world, it’s a tense subject. But I had no idea that things were _that_ bad until you guys were here last night. He was talking like he had no plans to stay here.”

A pause. “I know. It’s been like that since he woke up that day.”

“You really need to have him do an MRI or CAT scan or _something._ I personally agree with you, that this has nothing to do with the Crystal Age. But having him checked out would rule that out for sure.”

“And what if there’s nothing visibly wrong and he goes through that for nothing?” Now Lightning sounded upset and frustrated. “I know the risk is basically negligible, but what if putting him through those tests is the one thing that just _completely_ destroys our chances?”

He couldn’t take it anymore.

Hope stepped into the room. “Chances for what?”

Lightning actually yelped, the desk rattling as she jumped in surprise and stared at him with wide eyes. There was a beat before she calmed down enough to realize it was just him, but she still looked nervous and trapped, like a caged animal. “Hope? How long have you been standing there?”

“He’s there?” Serah’s voice was a little louder now and he could see the screen. The video showed her at a desk with a colorful bulletin board behind her, and he wondered if she was at the school she taught at. She seemed to look at Lightning. “Sis, don’t kid yourself. He probably heard everything.”

Lightning glanced at the screen, then at Hope. “...Did you?”

“Yes.” It suddenly felt imperative that he knew everything. From the start, he hadn’t questioned Lightning’s pleas to keep him from getting his head checked out, but if it meant figuring out if there was something wrong with him physically or finding out if this was a paradox...why wouldn’t she jump at the chance?

All three of them were silent before Serah cleared her throat. “I’ll let you guys talk,” she said carefully. “I need to make sure I have my lesson plans anyway.”

“Okay.” Lightning finally tore her stare from him and let out a long, low breath. “I’ll...talk to you later.”

“Count on it.” Before the screen went black, he could’ve sworn she murmured, “Good luck.”

They went quiet for a full minute before Lightning idly stood up and stared out the window, her back to him...almost like she wanted to get away from him. “I didn’t think you were the type to spy on people.”

“I’m not.” Which was true. Except for this one paramount time, apparently. “But I wasn’t asleep when I heard you guys talking, and then I heard you were talking about me, so...”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You haven’t wanted me to get my head checked out,” he pointed out. “Aren’t you the one here who’s so sure that my memory’s the thing that’s the problem? So if that’s the case, why wouldn’t you want to find out for sure?”

“Like I said, don’t worry about it.” She stared at the floor. “It’s stupid. There’s no real reason.”

“There’s got to be! What _is_ it Light?!” he cried, suddenly so damn frustrated that he wanted to tear his hair out. “I feel like this whole time you’ve been hiding something.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of _course_ it matters! You and mom and _everybody_ are all so convinced that I just lost my memory and this isn’t the result of a paradox from my world and time. What if this is the thing that would fix it?”

“...”

“Okay, maybe whatever’s going on won’t _fix_ things, but I’ve felt like a stranger since this all started – to this world. To everyone. To _you,_ and I hate that most of all because you’ve always been - ”

“We’ve been trying to have a baby.”

Hope immediately cut himself off, his mouth hanging open in shock before he snapped it closed. The words needed a full minute to register because he could barely even _begin_ to comprehend them, and even so, it left his head spinning.

“A...baby?”

Lightning crossed her arms over her chest, her shoulders hunched a bit. This was clearly the last thing in the world she wanted to talk about, but he had to know. He _had_ to. “Yes.”

“Us? A baby?”

He wondered why the concept felt so foreign to him. After all, people were still having children in his time – in fact, there’d been a slight baby boom at around 6AF, when the Gran Elevator had been completely established and people were much more comfortable with their new reality. He’d taken sex ed as a teenager. He knew how babies were made. Plus, he and Lightning were _married_ and had been for years. It was only natural.

Still, in his twenty-four year old brain, he couldn’t grasp the concept of being a _father._ Partially because of his situation with the Academy, he was sure, but even as his apparent reality here as a thirty-three year old married man, it still felt completely unreal.

But Lightning hadn’t shied away from it. She was clearly uncomfortable telling him for some reason, but not the idea of a baby itself.

And then he honed in on one word in particular.

“...'Trying'?”

Lightning sighed heavily and tightened her arms around herself. “Yes,” she said again. “We’ve been trying for the past year. It obviously hasn’t happened,” she continued, her gaze staring idly out the window again. “About four months ago we started seeing a couple of specialists. I was supposed to start some medication they said would help.”

Though he could barely wrap his head about the whole baby thing as it was, he knew a year was a long time to try and get something that you thought was right in your grasp – especially if you were doing all that you could to get it.

“Have you started it?” he asked after a long pause as he attempted to absorb all of this. “That medication?”

Now she glanced at him, looking truly exasperated. “Hope, you recently woke up with a ten year gap in your memory. Or a thousand years, depending on how you spin it. You don’t know anything about this world and you don’t remember the majority of what happened in the Crystal Age.” She turned to him. “What did you think I would do? Tell you to suck it up because our family plans couldn’t wait?”

“Of course not,” he replied quietly. A lot of things were starting to click in his mind and he had no idea which of them to address first. “Is...is _that_ why you don’t want me going for those tests?”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “There’s an extremely slim chance that the magnets and radiation in the machines can cause fertility issues. In most cases, the chances of it causing a problem is less than a percent. Especially since they’d just be looking at your head.”

Less than a percent?

Any scientist would be able to proclaim that, most of the time, less than a percent was basically nothing. Negligible. An anomaly.

But other times, less than a percent could mean the difference between one extreme and another.

He stood there, still trying to absorb all of this information. It sort of felt like he might faint again, except his head was now too stuffed with facts and possibilities and holy crap Lightning wanted a _baby._

With _him._

“You didn’t want to risk it,” he finally said, “because we’ve been having so many problems otherwise. Is that right?”

“Yes.” She let out a long, low breath. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you, but you were so freaked out just with the idea of being married to me. There just never seemed to be a good time. I’ve been hoping that your memory would just sort itself out, especially after last night.”

He winced, recalling the terror that had all but consumed him. It seemed like a weird connection to make, but he could see her point – since he’d had such a vivid dream about something that had happened to him and yet didn’t remember, there was no doubt that she’d take that an oddly good sign.

Hell, it seemed like she’d take any good sign that she could get.

“Are you going to do it?” he asked. “That medication?”

“What’s the point?” She uncrossed her arms and brushed her bangs aside, clearly frustrated and upset. “You don’t even sleep in the bed with me. Even if I was somehow able to get pregnant through osmosis, there’s no way we could bring a baby into this.”

A knot formed in his stomach. Everything suddenly felt like his fault, even though nobody knew who or what had screwed up his head. “Because of me.”

“It’s not just that,” Lightning said gently, like she suddenly realized just how harsh she’d sounded before. “This is something you were so excited about. We talked for ages about how we would deal with it and made all these plans. It’s why I started working from home. I stopped teaching the aerobics class because one of my doctors said I might have been too stressed and it was affecting me negatively. You were saving up all your paid time off at work.”

The paid time off he was using now, he realized with a stab of guilt. At this point he was just wracked with it, even though he logically knew he couldn’t have known any of this, not with the way his head was.

“Light...”

“Serah’s right, though,” she said. “Figuring out what’s wrong with you is more important. _You_ are more important to me than a hypothetical baby.”

Hope was honestly at a loss for words. This was too much, even for him.

Lightning glanced at her computer when it made a couple of alarm noises and her shoulders sagged. “I need to get to work,” she said, heading to the chair. She looked him in the eyes for the first time this conversation. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”

She sat down as he nodded and walked out of the room in a daze. He slumped onto the couch, staring at his wedding ring, and sat like that for the rest of the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol so many of you were wondering if Lightning was pregnant....the answer was always not quite~ ;P
> 
> thank you as always for you comments and support, it really means a lot to me! :D


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please note the rating change ;D

Regardless of the baby bomb, Hope knew that time still ticked forward and he couldn’t sit around like a zombie forever. Well, perhaps he _could,_ but then everyone would worry about him even more than usual and that was the last thing he needed.

As he’d taken to doing when Lightning worked from home, he made her lunch and replenished her coffee, even going so far as to brew a new pot. She looked surprised when he brought the plate and mug up to her, but managed a tiny smile when she thanked him.

Instead of doing what he normally did – chores around the house or going through their shared novels – this time he went outside in the backyard and sat in a lawn chair that was near the rosebushes. He pulled out his phone and stared at it for a long moment before calling someone that was surely out of work by now.

He was right.

“Did you know?”

“Hope?” Nora understandably sounded confused. “Know what, sweetie?”

“That Lightning and I were trying to have a baby?”

She was quiet for a long moment before letting out a deep sigh. “Oh, dear. She told you?”

“It came up,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “So you knew?”

“Honey, that’s business between you and Claire. She asked me if I had any references for doctors and things since you two were having trouble, but I’m not chomping at the bit to become a grandmother.”

 _Grandmother._ That word sounded so strange in any universe. His own grandparents had died shortly after he was born.

But if Nora knew, then by extension his dad did, too. And he remembered Vanille making a comment about the risk of an MRI, so surely she and Fang also knew. And of course Serah and Snow did...

That was practically everyone. How had they managed to hide it from him? Especially since it was clear that Lightning was so frustrated with the whole process? He didn’t know if the problem was with him or her or both of them, but clearly they’d been planning on figuring out all the options.

Until he'd woken up and bashed his head on the nightstand.

The weirdest thing – and maybe it was just a result of the shock – was that he didn’t feel particularly embarrassed or nervous talking about this. Though he remembered otherwise, talking about pregnancy and fertility and babies with Lightning felt like a conversation he’d had dozens of times before.

He didn’t really want to think about the implications of that.

Nora’s voice was gentle when she spoke again. “Are you two still going to try?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve just been trying not to screw this life up. I keep thinking that the real version of me that belongs here is going to come back any day now. But what if years go by before things sort themselves out? That’s all that time lost trying to figure out if Lightning and I could have a baby and screwing up the chances even more in the process.”

“Or,” Nora interrupted when he paused for breath, “you could look at this as an opportunity.”

“What?”

“If you’re so convinced you’re from the old world, maybe you were sent here for a reason. And if you look at it like that, the idea of losing your memories doesn’t seem so ludicrous, now, does it?”

Hope made a sort of croaking noise before going quiet. His mom had a point, he realized. A really, really good one. From what his research had told him, a paradox happened with little reason or rhyme. And since this was a world away from magic and fal’cie and Chaos, maybe everyone was right. Maybe this _wasn’t_ a paradox.

Although none of that explained why he didn’t feel like the Rightful Hope.

“Can I ask you something?” he finally said when he was able to speak again.

“Of course.”

“Was I...excited about having a baby with Lightning?”

Nora let out a breath. “Honestly? When you let it slip that you two were trying, you were completely over the moon.” There was a smile in her voice. “I don’t think I’d ever seen you look so thrilled.”

He remembered that Lightning had also mentioned that he’d been excited. His mother’s words proved it for sure, then. And while he wasn’t sure he could muster up the same kind of enthusiasm with his twenty-four year old brain, the thought of starting a family with the woman he’d always loved and admired _did_ make his stomach flutter.

Was it worth it to try, especially if he never found out what his problem was? Would he just be preparing a family for the Rightful Hope to have? Or, if they managed to have a baby, would he just go through life helping to raise it with a thousand-year gap in his memory?

It was a lot to think about. Too much.

Geez, no wonder Lightning hadn’t brought this up with him.

“Hope?”

“Hmm?”

“For what it’s worth,” Nora said into the phone, “I think you’d make a wonderful father, no matter what the state of your memories.”

Hope’s chest ached, but for once, he didn’t think it was entirely in a bad way.

–--

After assuring Lightning that he would be back later – to which she readily agreed, since they both clearly needed time apart to think about things – he took the car and very carefully drove to the beach.

His and Lightning’s spot.

Since it was still early afternoon, there were a few people milling about. When he crossed the grass, he saw a couple of weathered picnic tables he hadn’t noticed last time and sat down at one, staring towards the sea.

Or at least, he tried to. His gaze kept wandering towards the families that were there – a couple with three kids. Two men swinging a young child between them, occasionally lifting her off the ground, much to her delight. A woman with a teenager, the two of them having an animated conversation.

That made him remember his vacation to Bodhum with his mom, where everything had started. He recalled that she’d planned it out for six whole months, and with every reservation and plan made, he’d gotten more and more excited. Even his dad was supposed to come.

Of course in retrospect, it was a very good thing that he hadn’t, but Hope had been so angry when he and his mother stood in line for the train, leaving his father behind. Just one more disappointment.

But now he thought he understood. Bartholomew had been afraid – afraid of getting close. Afraid of not being able to provide for his family. Afraid of making his son even more angry, somehow.

Hope thought about how he hadn’t made much of an effort to figure out what was wrong with his head, whether this was a paradox or what. Sure, a lot of it was because this was a completely new world and it wasn’t something he could easily research, but maybe he could have insisted on those tests. Maybe he could have been doing some experiments or something. Anything besides just... _accepting_ that this was the way things were and that the Rightful Hope would just pop back eventually.

Because Nora had a point.

What if he _was_ the Rightful Hope?

He still wasn’t sure if he was worthy of this life, of all this happiness and security. But maybe he needed to _believe_ he was. All of this was everything he’d ever dreamed about. Why couldn’t he have it? Why not?

Especially since he...he...

“I want to stay.”

Hope let out a long breath and looked up at the endless, cloudless sky, expecting it to tear apart when he uttered those words.

Nothing happened.

“Everyone says this isn’t a paradox, that it can’t be,” he murmured to himself. He wasn’t really sure who he was trying to talk to. His past self? The future? A version of Lightning he didn’t remember? “And now I want to believe that. I truly do. But if I stay, and it turns out I’m taking this life away from the Rightful Hope, will...will she...”

 _Will she still love me,_ he didn’t say out loud.

The Lightning he held so fondly in his non-lost memories had always guarded her emotions. Sure, she’d have rare moments of vulnerability that he treasured like the rarest jewels, but for the most part, she'd kept everything inside.

Here in this world, however, he’d gotten so accustomed to the soft look on her face that always seemed to be there, especially when she looked at him. All the things that had weighed on her in the Crystal Age simply vanished – either that, or at some point, she’d learned to accept her emotions. Of course she’d hidden things from him here – like, oh, the possibility of baby.

But not once had she hidden how she felt about him.

And there, he knew, was his answer.

His feelings for Lightning had always simmered in his heart. As a kid, he’d written it off as a crush or admiration, but the older he got and the more he learned so he could try and find her, the more those feelings grew. They weren’t quite full to bursting when he was twenty-four, but clearly at some point they had and then some.

There was zero doubt in his mind that he could love her the way she deserved.

Whatever was wrong, they’d figure it out side-by-side, the way they were supposed to.

_We’ll be together._

–--

When he got back, the sun was just about setting. He walked into the house to find Lightning sitting on the couch, looking at something on her phone. She slid it back in her pocket when he walked in, looking relieved to see him.

“Hey,” she greeted, and something on his face must have given away what he was thinking, because she added with a slight frown, “Is everything all right?”

“I think so.” He kicked off his shoes and sat down next to her – much closer than he’d initiated since waking up here.

She clearly noticed and raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment and only asked, “Are you sure?”

“I’ve been doing some thinking.” Hope impulsively reached out and covered her hand with his, noticing the way her lips parted in surprise just a little bit. “A lot of thinking, actually.”

“Yes?” She met his eyes, looking cautiously hopeful. After all, he probably wouldn’t be holding her hand if it was bad news. Or maybe he would, but he didn’t think he was giving off a dark vibe or anything.

“Do you know the law of parsimony?”

“What?”

“It’s the idea that the simplest explanation is usually the right one,” he explained. She met his eyes at that, the hope there very much evident. “I’ve been proven over and over that this world is calm and peaceful. You’ve all told me that there’s no way this could be a paradox, so I’ve also been inventing other possibilities in my head, that there was a rightful version of me that deserved to be here.” He shook his head with a little smile. “But I never stopped to realize that losing my memory was the _most_ possible scenario, especially when all the other variables are considered. I mean, I have this scar.” He touched his chest with his free hand. “And I’m in the right body. I remember things I shouldn’t. No other explanation makes sense.”

Lightning looked a bit dazed at this onslaught of information, like she couldn’t quite believe it was real. “Are you saying...”

“Yes.” He held her hand up, holding it between both of his. “When we talk to Noel and Yeul, I want to ask them if there’s a way to get my _memories_ back.”

She inhaled sharply, eyes wide. “Really?”

“I’m tired of pretending I don’t want this,” he said, the words spilling out in a rush. “If it is my memories that are the problem, then this life _is_ mine. And if I’m wrong and it’s something else, why shouldn’t I be able to be happy while I’m here?”

“Hope...” All of a sudden, she frowned, a tiny crease between her eyebrows. “Is this just because of earlier? About trying for a baby?”

“Light.” He let go of her hands, only to cup her face and look straight into her eyes. He wanted her to know this, the truest thing he would ever say. “I _love_ you. And being with you, having a life together, is all I’ve wanted for so long. I’m not fool enough to run away from it anymore.”

Her breath escaped in a shaky rush and she closed her eyes like it was all suddenly too much – or maybe it was finally _enough,_ that she’d been waiting to hear those words for weeks.

“Do you love me?” he suddenly asked. When her eyes fluttered open in a silent question, he continued, “I’m not asking if you love the man you married or the Hope that saved you from the dark or the one that was waiting for you when you stepped off that train.” After all, he didn’t have those memories. _Yet._ And until then, provided it even happened, this was all he could offer. “Do you love _me,_ the way I am right now, no matter what happens tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Not even a hint of hesitation. For her, it was just that simple. Maybe she’d spent that time she was alone before they were together figuring it out and now there was no doubt in her mind.

And now there was none in his, either.

His hands fell from her face and landed on her shoulders, his own sagging with relief. It honestly wasn’t as though he’d doubted her, but getting things out there in the open was harder than it seemed.

She smiled warmly, reaching up to brush his bangs from his forehead. Her fingertips slowly traced the side of his face, then over his jaw. When her thumb brushed his lip, he remembered that closed-mouth kiss she’d given him.

And now he couldn’t help but wonder.

“Can I - ”

She leaned up, effectively cutting him off with her answer as their lips met. He sort of jumped a little, startled – even though he’d been about to ask for it – but he moved his hands to her waist and pulled her closer as he gently kissed back. It was experimental, in a way. Of course Lightning knew how he liked to be kissed, but he wasn’t quite sure since he didn’t have the memories.

But he was more than happy to make some, of course. And now he’d always have the memory of her tongue slipping into his mouth as the air between them grew more and more charged.

Though their kisses had started off as slow and tentative, apparently that was just a means to fan the flames. Whether it was because of their conversation or the reassurance that they were together no matter what, he completely gave in to his desire and his hands were suddenly all over Lightning. Or were those _her_ hands? It was hard to tell, because whatever they were doing suddenly escalated into something he had no control over. The past few weeks of avoiding the temptation of letting things get too far had suddenly caught up to them _big_ time and then some.

“Hope,” she gasped, his name on her lips like _that_ doing something to make his insides even more fluttery than they already were. “ _Please,_ I just - ”

Forget the past ten years, he immediately forgot the past week, his childhood, what he'd had for breakfast – everything was secondary to Lightning Farron _pleading_ with him.

“Yes,” was all he could reply in between kisses, and before he knew it, they'd somehow gotten up and managed to make their way to the bedroom, the journey lost to more moans and her lips.

She pushed him onto the bed and crawled on top of him, straddling his lap so easily that it vaguely made him wonder how many times she'd done that. Not that he was complaining at _all,_ because having Lightning on top of him, her hips grinding against his as her hands clawed at his shirt and her lips bruised his was literally the stuff of his dreams.

 _Move on instinct._ Sure, that was battle advice, but from how desperately they were groping at each other, this totally was a battle – just a way, waaaaaaay different kind. And if instinct told him to grab her shirt and yank it over her head and then help her whip his off, well, who was he not to listen?

It was at this moment that he truly figured it was his memories that was the problem. If he was a paradox or the soul of one Hope in another – as he’d hypothesized – surely he wouldn’t have this kind of body memory, where he somehow knew exactly what to do to make Lightning groan into his mouth. Obviously back in his perceived time, he’d never had a chance to cultivate those kind of instincts.

Here, though...

“ _Off,”_ Lightning gasped, suddenly ripping her mouth from his and grabbing the waistband of his pants. He obeyed and lifted his hips, helping kick off his pants as she tugged them down. Vaguely, he wondered if her battle prowess had somehow transferred to the bedroom, because he’d _never_ seen her so demanding and sure otherwise. His pants were off in seconds, flung across the room without a care.

In any other situation, with his head the way it was, he might have been embarrassed. Even at twenty-four, he’d never done this before. Relationships and sex had been so far from his list of priorities that they weren’t even _on_ the list. And, well, he’d be the first to admit his heart had been stolen long ago, even if he didn’t quite realize it as a teenager.

But now, Lightning was staring at him with a fiery mix of love, desire, and _hunger_ and something as trivial as _embarrassment_ was the furthest thing from his mind. Instead he sat up enough to unbutton her skirt, watching intently as it slid down her legs into a puddle on the floor.

That seemed to be some unspoken cue to climb to the middle of the bed, where Hope barely got to look at her before she’d crawled on top of him again and reconnected their lips. Her tongue was doing things he had no idea was even possible and it was all he could do to just hold on and give back as good as he got.

The feel of their bare legs tangling together made him moan, which only grew louder when she rocked him into the bed, grinding against him in a way that was too much and not enough. He randomly thanked whatever deity out there that he was in a thirty-three year old body, because had he been in his younger one, this all would’ve ended right about...now.

“ _Light,_ ” he gasped out of the corner of his mouth, his hands running up and down her bare back. “Light I need – I need to see you - ”

She tore her lips from his and kissed down his jaw and neck. It was like she was afraid to stop touching him, or it wouldn’t be real.

He could relate.

Finally she pulled away and sat up, her eyes practically glowing with that hunger. He leaned up on his elbows, his gaze blatantly roaming over her body. She was wearing a black bra, plain and simple with no frills, but it looked so damn tantalizing on her. His eyes wandered down over her abs and hips, staring at her panties, a light blue pair that did nothing to hide the wet spot there. He couldn’t imagine he was faring any better, especially since she was still grinding on him in very light motions, keeping them both juuuust on the edge.

“You’re beautiful,” he blurted out, and that seemed to be the catalyst for them to suddenly touch each other in a frenzy again. He slipped his hands under her bra, not wanting to waste time removing it, and groped and squeezed until she was arching into his hands, her hips growing a little more erratic until she suddenly stopped and threw her head back, mouth open in a silent moan.

Hope paused. Did she just - ?

“I want you,” she gasped a few seconds later, her hands threading in his hair and tugging slightly as she mashed their lips together desperately in a sloppy kiss. “Damnit, I’ve missed you so _much_ \- ”

Now was _definitely_ not the time to open that can of worms, so he kissed back, his hands sliding from her breasts to her hips, tugging at her panties. It was tough to get both of their underwear off because she didn’t seem to want to stop kiss ing him, which he was certainly _more_ than okay with.

But damnit, he wanted her too. _All_ of her.

And now there was nothing stopping them from giving in to desire.

Finally – save for her bra – they were naked and his heart was pounding in anticipation. He knew that in this world, they had done this a thousand times, but in his literal current state of mind, he was as nervous as if it were the first time.

No, maybe _nervous_ wasn’t quite the word he pondered, staring at the way their bare legs pressed together as her body hovered over his.

_Excited._

Hope had no idea if that expression was evident on his face or if they were both clearly going to explode if they didn’t have each other _now,_ but Lightning barely waited for a nod before she lowered herself onto him and they were joined.

It was _better_ than anything he could have ever imagined. He immediately groaned, head falling back on the pillows as he thrust up into her, her hips slamming down in an imperfect rhythm. She pressed her hands on his chest, then gripped his hair, and finally just grabbed a section of the sheets next to him, like she couldn’t decide what to hold onto as she rode him with hard movements that made his head spin.

He wasn’t surprised that she was fairly quiet, save for her shaky gasps of breath as they finally found a good rhythm, but when she let out a loud moan, his eyes flew open and his breath caught at the look on her face.

Her eyes were half-lidded, cheeks pink from the exertion. But it was that utter _softness,_ the kind that had surprised him since he’d woken up here, that once again threw his heart for a loop.

They were in love.

He truly had no doubts about it now.

The sudden realization made him urgently lift his head and kiss her, one hand threading into her hair. She moaned into it and he used that distraction to flip them over with a dexterity he honestly had no idea he’d been capable of.

She broke the kiss with a gasp. “Hope - ”

His reply was to snap his hips and she moaned out loud this time, her head falling back as he thrust into her with complete abandon, no longer worried about what the hell he was doing. She cried out his name, her hands on his back, scrambling for purchase before she simply wrapped her arms around him, clearly wanting to keep him as close as humanly possible. He buried his face in her neck, kissing along the skin before he realized that her nails were digging into his back and lifted his head, his face mere inches from hers.

When she came again, she literally stopped moving for a few seconds, like the sensation was too much for her body, her mouth open in a silent moan before everything finally seemed to catch up and she let out a little whimper of pleasure that dissolved into a groan.

“Please,” she gasped, her mouth right against his ear. “Oh _fuck,_ you’re so - ”

Whether it was the plea or the curse, Hope knew that he couldn’t hold on any longer. It was kind of a miracle he had for this long, really, but it was just a few more thrusts before he came with a low moan of her name.

He’d had orgasms before, of course. It was pretty much inevitable when he’d been a teenager who spent a lot of time alone. But the sensation of coming from his own hand was _nothing_ compared to feeling it with Lightning gripped around him, all of her holding on like she never, ever wanted to let go again. His head spun, his breath caught, and the pleasure was so intense that he was pretty sure he went legally blind for half a second.

How long they stayed like that, with her arms wrapped around him and their legs tangled and his hands on her skin was anyone’s guess, but he was literally trembling when the intensity finally ebbed. He all but collapsed, careful not to crush her, and she only grunted but didn’t let go, clearly in no hurry for them to separate in any sense of the word.

When she was finally forced to get up – however long had passed, he had no idea – she reluctantly wiggled from underneath him and said “bathroom” in a dazed voice. He hummed in reply, watching her almost-naked body as she stumbled to the door. She glanced at him before she closed it and they smiled at each other.

It seemed like she was gone forever, but it was only a few minutes later that she came back to the bed, now sans the bra, and immediately snuggled up to him. Who knew Lightning Farron was a cuddler?

His arms instinctively went around her when she buried her face in his neck. He could feel rather than hear her pants for breath. Their legs tangled together and she kept flexing her hand against his naked chest, like she wanted to grip it but there was no fabric to hold onto.

“Wow,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he agreed, still trying to catch his breath. His mind was basically mush. Sure, he was in the body of a thirty-three year old who was apparently much more used to this, but clearly sex was at least half mental and of course his mind was not used to this at _all._ He wondered if he’d ever come down from that high.

Lightning lifted her head and he looked at her as best he could in their position. Her face was flushed, her eyes were still glowing with pleasure, and she looked more relaxed than he’d ever seen her.

She was stunning.

“No, seriously,” she murmured. “That was...” She shook her head a little and Hope worried for a second before she sighed in utter satisfaction. “I’d forgotten it could be like that.”

“What?”

“For the past year...” She trailed off for a second, her fingers now tracing random patterns on his chest. It was extremely distracting, which was why he didn’t quite get what she was insinuating at first. “We’ve just been so focused on trying to have a baby that sometimes it felt almost like work.”

“Oh.” Hope honestly couldn’t imagine it _ever_ feeling that way – not with her. “How so?”

Whether it was from the sex or just having everything out in the open, Lightning was clearly slightly more comfortable talking about the whole baby thing now. “Well, there’s some doctors that recommend you only try during certain times of the month, depending on someone's cycle. There’s others that say you should try or do certain things. It’s a lot to keep track of.”

“Oh. Yeah, I bet.”

“And now, having a specialist in the mix and the possibility of taking that medication, it’s probably going to get more complicated.” She sighed, leaning down to rest her head on his chest. He wondered if she could hear how hard his heart was pounding. “So it was nice that I could just...be with you without worrying about anything else. Besides your memory, I guess.”

“That’s still a lot to worry about,” he mused, his fingertips skimming up and down her arm. “But you know what?”

“Hmm?”

“We’ll figure it out.” He smiled when she looked up at him. “Together.”

“Together,” she agreed, kissing his lips with a smile before she snuggled up to him and they both gradually dozed off.

Hope smiled to himself, one thought at the front of his mind before he drifted to dreamland.

Why on _earth_ had they waited so long to do that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GEE HOPE I WONDER WHY
> 
> I'm really not much of a smut writer, but this sorta demanded it so I was like....hell yeah, OTP doing the do is never a bad thing lmao
> 
> thank you all forever for all of your comments~ :D


	12. Chapter 12

Rays of dawn streaked through the windows. Lightning Farron-Estheim was curled up next to him, her head on his naked chest, where she lay fast asleep. Their breathing was in sync and every time he so much as shifted, she murmured in her sleep and tightened her hold on him.

Was he dreaming? He had to be. There was no other explanation.

And yet, when Lightning finally opened her eyes a few minutes later and looked him, he was sure that even his dreams couldn’t conjure an image so beautiful.

“Hey,” he greeted, his voice thick with sleep as he rolled over onto his side. She wiggled around so that her head was on the pillow, but otherwise didn’t move too far.

“Hey,” she murmured back, a little smile forming on her lips. She reached up and ran a hand through his hair, to which he sighed in utter contentment, closing his eyes. After basically petting him for a minute, she added, “You seem happy.”

“I am.” He opened one eye, suddenly a little nervous. “Are you?”

“Very.” Her fingers drifted from his hair and down the side of his face, so much love and adoration in her expression that it was impossible to mistake it for anything else. “Like I said last night...I’ve sort of forgotten things could be like that.”

“I’m amazed I forgot, even with memory problems.” He watched her smile a little at the mention of memory – nothing about a paradox or anything like that. “Last night was amazing. _You’re_ amazing. I can’t believe I’m actually _married_ to you.”

“Believe it.” She leaned in and kissed him, a quick, sweet peck.

He grinned into the kiss, capturing her lips again, although his comment about their marriage also brought forth a silly question that’d been nagging at his mind. He hadn’t wanted to ask in case it made her upset, but she was clearly in a good enough mood that he decided to risk it.

“How did I propose, anyway?” When he remembered who he was talking to, he added, “...Unless you were the one who did it?”

“No.” She chuckled, a cloud of sadness in her eyes for a split second, but it was gone in an instant. Maybe she was just upset that he didn’t remember, not at the question itself. “No, you did the asking. I can’t imagine _I_ would have ever felt ready to do it.”

“But you said yes.”

“I did.” Her arm slid around his waist and she raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to know the story?”

“Uh...” Suddenly he wasn’t so sure...but if was going to get his memories back, he’d remember anyway, right? “I’m sure.”

She rolled her eyes with a smirk, always seeing right through him, but told the story anyway. “We were at the beach so we could watch the sunset. We’d been together for about a year at that point and you’d asked me a couple of times if you ever wanted us to get married.”

At least no matter how it happened, he’d had the sense to not just drop the bomb on her. That _did_ sound like something he would do in any universe. “And?”

“I was open to the idea, but I wasn’t entirely sure. I knew I wanted to stay with you, but...marriage is such a big deal, you know?”

“I do.” It was why, of course, he had freaked out so much upon finding out. The enormity of it was insane, especially in his twenty-four year old brain.

She made a sound of acknowledgment. “That evening, I got the feeling you had something planned, but I wasn’t entirely sure what. I’d just started my job at the nonprofit so my head was in a million different directions. I thought maybe you’d just wanted to take my mind off everything and that’s why we went to the beach.”

Another thing he could relate to. The beach had been a great aid in all of his thinking the other day, after all.

“We were just walking along one evening, talking about nothing in particular,” she continued, “when you suddenly stopped in this empty area and just stared out at the ocean and then looked at me. You looked all fidgety and nervous.”

Hope was a little proud of his future...past...whatever self. Surely he got down on one knee and said the words. The beach sunset would be a perfect backdrop to a romantic proposal.

“And then you blurted out, ‘Do you hear something ringing?’”

His fantasies immediately disappeared and he let out a strange croaking noise. “No. No _way.”_

“Yes.” Lightning looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for him. “When I asked what you meant, you pulled this little box out of your pocket and shook it, saying you could hear something ringing.”

“I did _not._ ”

“You did.” There was a big smirk on her face now. “You showed me the box and said it sounded like the ringing was coming from there. So you opened it...”

“...And it was your engagement ring,” Hope finished with a groan. He buried his face into his pillow in pure embarrassment. “Seriously?” he cried out, his voice muffled. “I proposed to you with a _pun?!”_

“It was funny in retrospect,” she reassured him, her hand running up and down his back in soothing motions. “I’ll admit I was a little confused at the time. I couldn’t figure out if you were serious.”

“Ugg _gggghhhhh.”_

“Don’t worry.” She patted his shoulder blade. “Once we got over the awkwardness, you got down on one knee and actually asked.”

“Did I?” He lifted his head from the pillow and faced her again. “Or are you just trying to save what’s left of my dignity?”

“You did,” she said with a smile that reached her eyes, leaving no room for doubt. “Honestly, I think you just needed to get the idea out there, and when I was okay with it, that gave you the courage to make it real.”

“Still.” He sighed heavily. “A _pun.”_

She gazed at him curiously. “You tell them pretty often,” she said. “Is that something you didn’t pick up until you were older, maybe?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed again. “I have to admit that they’re my preferred form of humor, but now I’m starting to wonder if I should rethink that.”

“You shouldn’t.” She moved a little closer and cupped his face. “I love your puns. And...every...thing...about...you,” she added, kissing him between every word.

“What a coincidence,” he murmured, eagerly kissing her back. “Because I...do...too.”

They both smiled, their legs twined together as they kissed over and over, not giving a damn about morning breath, even when Lightning coaxed his mouth open and their tongues met. He vaguely wondered if they were going to have a repeat of last night, when...

_BRRRRRRRRRRRIIIING! BRRRRRRRRRRRIIIINNNNG!_

Lightning abruptly pulled away, patting her hand on the nightstand but then sat up when the noise continued.

“Light?”

“Sorry.” She rolled away – with great reluctance, he noticed – and got out of bed. “That’s my alarm. I usually wake up before it goes off.” He stared as she wandered around the room, totally naked and muttering to herself. “Where the hell did I...”

He sat up, remembering that this was usually the day she went into the office. If the alarm was going off, that probably meant she needed to start getting ready to leave...right?

And yet, to his surprise, once she found her phone – which had been buried under the clothes they’d tossed off in a hurry last night – and turned off the alarm, she stared at him for a moment before she came right back to bed. Her arms snaked around his neck as she straddled his lap.

His arms automatically circled her waist, and while his heart was already racing, he couldn’t stop his confusion. “Don’t you need to get ready for work?”

“I can work from home today,” she insisted.

It wasn’t until she rolled her hips into him that he understood the double meaning. He sucked in a breath, his hands gripping her waist. “Are you sure?”

She responded by tilting her head and kissing him, the long, lazy one they’d been working up to before her alarm rang. She continued to grind against him in a slow, steady pace, his hips trying to match her rhythm, but it was hard from his position...in more ways than one.

“Hope.” His name had never sounded so good when she breathed it out through the corner of her mouth. Her hands cupped the back of his neck, bringing his lips closer. Their bodies pressed together with no space at all between them and it was _almost_ all he wanted.

“Light...” His hands tightened on her waist again before they relaxed. He kissed her jaw, urging her to tilt her head back so he could kiss his way down her neck, delighting at the way she gasped when he gently sucked at the junction where her neck met her shoulder. He moved upwards, only asking after his tongue traced the shell of her ear. “Light, please, I want - ”

“ _Yes.”_ She met his lips again for a brief moment before she lifted her body just enough so that he could guide himself inside her. 

He groaned low in his throat, pressing their lips together in something that wasn’t quite a kiss, but it clearly didn’t matter. They just needed to be  _touching,_ preferably all the time. 

Despite the frantic pounding of his heart, they both continued to move leisurely, like they had all the time in the world.  He managed to find the perfect rhythm that met every slow roll of her hips, both of them already trembling with pleasure.

Last night had been so fast and fiery, and while their pace now was the complete opposite, he still felt that passion that made his skin tingle and his toes curl. This was a different kind of desperation, one that gripped him with tenderness and affection. Being close was their only priority.

At one point, she leaned her head back, her body arched away from his slightly. It gave him just enough room to press open-mouthed kisses to her bare breasts, to which she responded by digging her nails into his shoulders.

“ _Hope - “_

Gods, he could live forever hearing her say his name like that. Surely that would be enough to sustain him. A primal shock of possession struck him as he realized that he was the only one who got to hear her like this. Hear, see, taste,  _touch._

It was him.  _Only_ him.

Her pace soon grew slightly faster and a little less steady. He kissed his way up her chest, pausing to suck another mark to that sensitive spot on her neck, and let his breath caress her ear.

“ _Mine.”_

She cried out, a sound that was a cross between a gasp and a moan, and tugged on his hair _hard_ as she went still except for the way her hips jerked in small, uncontrollable motions. It seemed like she completely stopped breathing for a minute and it wasn’t until she finally loosened her grip on his hair that he dared to start moving again.

“Hope,” she whimpered, so unlike her and yet exactly like her. Their lips met, a little more desperate this time. He moaned into her mouth, every nerve in his body coiled so tightly that he wondered if he would go crazy with this _need._

And then she broke the kiss and breathed against his ear.

“ _Yours.”_

Now he knew why his claim to her had pushed her over the edge. That thrill of knowing that they truly belong to each other and no one else, ever – _nothing_ could compare and he’d never wanted anything more.

They rode out his pleasure together until the intensity had ebbed off enough for them to collapse onto the bed, both of them sighing in utter satisfaction.

And love.

He looked at Lightning and raised a trembling hand to brush her sweaty bangs from her forehead. She smiled, taking her beauty to a level that was utterly dazzling.

“I love you,” he murmured, the words feeling sacred after all that.

“I love you too,” she whispered, clearly not wanting to break the spell they were under.

They lay there in each other’s arms for a long time, basking in the afterglow. He never wanted to move again.

When Lightning finally spoke, he felt a tinge of disappointment because reality was coming back for them and she probably needed to get to work...but luckily for him, he was pleasantly surprised.

“You know,” she said, slowly climbing on top of him with a kiss. “I think I’m going to take the morning off.”

He just grinned.

–--

Eventually, after a few repeat performances in which he found out Lightning could be _astonishingly_ loud when she wanted to be, she did have to eventually roll out of bed to get some work done. While he felt guilty that he couldn’t go to his own job, he knew he’d be able to make up for it once he got his memories back.

Plus, it was _very_ nice to lay in bed and watch her putter around, picking out clothes and fixing her hair. It was domestic and comfortable, but instead of freaking himself out about it, he just enjoyed it.

When she’d finished getting ready, Lightning glanced at him, where he was simply laying there, leaning up on one elbow as he watched her. She smiled and leaned in to kiss him.

“Stay here as long as you like,” she murmured.

“Not as much fun without you.”

She snorted in amusement and flicked his forehead. “I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

“Okay.” He couldn’t resist sitting up to cup her face for one more kiss. “I love you.”

Her smile was everything. “Love you, too.”

He felt high or maybe drunk as he watched her leave the room. Not that he was particularly familiar with either of those sensations, but what else could possibly describe this dazed, floaty feeling?

Could it be that he actually felt... _happy?_

Hope never would have said that he was quite _un_ happy, back in the time he remembered. Sure, it depressed him to have everyone he knew and loved missing or just gone forever, which matched the doubt he sometimes felt for himself. Rescuing everyone and finding Lightning – he’d always thought it would take a miracle and he’d often wondered if he’d already had his fair share of miracles when he’d been released from crystal.

On the other hand, there’d been plenty of good moments, too. Becoming leader of the Academy and helping it flourish, seeing people adapt to Pulse, all of his visits to New Bodhum - things like that assured him that he couldn’t give in to despair.

But this feeling was completely different. Okay, a lot of it was probably from all the sex, but it was more than that. This was the knowledge that things were good, that he was loved and the people he cared about were close by, safe, and happy.

Why had he ever believed that he couldn’t have this?

He would have been fine just laying there all day, basking in all the afterglow, but he soon realized he was starving and forced himself to get out of bed. He quickly threw on some clothes and headed towards the kitchen, pausing in front of the door to the other room – her office - where Lightning was at her desk. She was on the phone, so she only acknowledged him with a glance and a smile, but that was okay.

As he continued down the hall, he looked over his shoulder as a thought came to mind.

Had she ever actually _called_ that room her office?

Maybe, he mused as he started toasting a bagel once he got to the kitchen. But it was weird that she only ever seemed to use that desk and kept everything right there. The rest of the room looked like it was a work in progress, or maybe for storage. Perhaps she was rearranging things so that it was better suited for her needs. But she’d been working from home for about a year, so why did it still -

He dropped the knife he’d been using to spread the cream cheese, where it landed on the floor with a clatter.

Oh, gods. For as smart as he was, he sure felt stupid sometimes.

That was supposed to be the _baby’s_ room.

How had that not occurred to him now? That was another dumb question, he thought an instant later. He’d obviously been extremely _distracted_ since the baby news, in more ways than one.

But it made sense. This was a fairly small house and that was the only other room that could possibly be a bedroom. Maybe they’d started gathering some furniture and things for their future child’s use. And Lightning’s office area was so temporary-looking because it was _supposed_ to be temporary. Maybe she’d thought that trying to fix it up or set up a more permanent area would jinx them even more.

He vaguely wondered what would happen if they had a second kid. Would they move? Build an addition to the house? But that was _definitely_ preemptive thinking, considering they were having trouble with having just the one.

Really, he would have thought by now that the baby bomb would’ve sunk in, but apparently not.

In a total daze, Hope picked up the knife and randomly set it in the sink, abandoning his bagel as he went to the couch and pulled out his phone. He started looking up things about pregnancy, advice for new fathers, what it was like to be a first-time parent...

When Lightning appeared in the room about an hour later to replenish her coffee, he was on the verge of freaking out.

“I’m going to be a terrible father,” he blurted out when she glanced at him questioningly.

She stared at him, then shook her head a bit with a weird mixture of amusement and exasperation. “This again?”

“What?”

“You’ve had this freakout before.” She sat down next to him. “Not that I haven’t had my fair share of them, but I’m a little surprised that you did, considering you were the one who suggested having a baby.”

He blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“Yes.” She nudged her shoulder against his. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to raise a kid. I’d spent so much of my childhood looking after Serah. And when we came to this world, it was like I could finally live for myself. I didn’t have to fight or save or look after anyone.” She looked down at her hands for a moment. “I think that’s why I spent that first year alone. It helped me see that I was better off with you. Being with you didn’t mean I had to stop living for myself.”

“Oh.” He actually felt himself blush. Whatever he’d done to earn such love and trust from someone so incredible was a miracle unto itself. “What changed your mind, then?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“You,” she echoed, looking up at him again with a tiny smile. “You really wanted to be a father. I think a part of it was because of your and Rosa’s bond.”

“Logic being that if being an uncle was so great, a father must be even better?”

“Yes,” she said. “Among other things. But it was just something you really, really wanted. It took me awhile to get on board with the idea.”

He mirrored her little smile. “So how did I end up convincing you?”

“Not so much with words,” she admitted. “It was a combination of things – seeing you so happy interacting with Rosa, watching you grow more and more confident at your job, and feeling how much you love me...” She brushed his bangs aside, a means of affection he was quickly learning to associate with her. “I guess it just hit me one day that any child we had would be half of you. And how could having more of you in the world possibly be a bad thing?”

He caught her hand in his and brought the back of it to his lips before swooping in to kiss her. “Maybe that’s why I was so adamant about it,” he said. “Because I wanted more of you in the world, too.”

She smiled and kissed him again, and he would have been quite content to just keep going, but he remembered the reason they’d started this conversation.

“So wait,” he said when he forced himself to pull away. “If that’s the case, why was I freaking out? Before my memory, I mean?”

“The reality of it, I think.” She patted his knee. “You said more than once that you were afraid you’d be an absentee father like Bartholomew was when you were younger. Or that you’d do something that would make your own kid hate you. Or - ”

He buried his face in his hands with a groan, not reassured by the fact that those thoughts had been running in the back of his head just now, too. “I get it.”

“Trust me, like I said, I had my share of freakouts too. I _still_ freak a little when I think about it too hard. But...” She lifted her hand and rest it on his back. “I know you, Hope. And no matter what memories you have, you know me, too. If something felt wrong, we’d be able to talk about it. We’d be raising this baby _together.”_

“We’ll be together.” Clearly there was truth in those words that extended to every part of their lives.

“That’s right.” She squeezed his shoulder gently. “Always.”

He straightened his back and looked at her, leaning in for a gentle kiss. “I love you,” he murmured.

“And I love you.” She kissed him again. “Are you okay for now?”

“Yes.” He glanced at his phone, which still showed an article titled _Top Ten Things All New Dads Should Know!_ “I’ll be fine.”

She didn’t quite look like she believed him, but just raised an eyebrow and picked up her mug to get that coffee. When she crossed the room to go back to her desk, he was already immersed in another article.

Lightning’s words had pacified him somewhat. He knew that once all of this was fixed, he’d probably feel like a fool for freaking out again, but it was hardly enough to deter them from their plans. Besides, both she and Nora had assured him that he’d been excited about having a baby.

Now he just needed to trust in that.

–--

When he woke up the next morning, Lightning was on the phone.

“Are you sure? We can wait another day.” A pause. “Thank you. That’d be great.” She sounded immensely relieved. “We’ll be over as soon as possible...okay. Thanks again. We’ll see you then.”

Hope sat up, his hair mussed, and he was all sleepy and confused. “Light?”

“Noel text me last night,” she said, the relief palatable now. “He said that Yeul’s ready if we wanted to talk to her.”

It took his barely-awake mind a minute to comprehend this, but when he did, he was instantly awake. “You think she’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong with my memories?”

“I hope so. It’s worth a shot.” But it was clear she was counting on this. “Noel said we could go over there at anytime.”

Hope was out of bed in a flash. “What are we waiting for?”

He couldn’t help but cross his fingers as he showered and got ready. There was a sense of anticipation that he basked in.

Because maybe, finally, they were on their way to fixing this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> getting down to the nitty gritty ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
> 
> thank you as always for your comments :D


	13. Chapter 13

Since Noel and Yeul lived way on the outskirts of town, practically in the country, the drive took nearly forty-five minutes. At first he and Lightning didn’t talk much, because as excited as he was for the possibility of getting his life back, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was all a wild chocobo chase. Yeul was a seeress in the Crystal Age, but what did that mean here in this peaceful world? What if there was nothing that could be done?

_Don’t think like that,_ he told himself. Good thoughts, good thoughts.

“You know...” Lightning finally said when they were about ten minutes away. “There’s a possibility that nothing might come from this visit.” Her fingers gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly. “I want you to be prepared for that. Just in case.”

Hope sighed heavily. “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he admitted. “Especially since I’ve never met either of them, as far as I remember. For me it’s like trusting my fate to a stranger.”

“I never thought of it like that.” She glanced at him for a second. “Do you want to turn back?”

“No.”

Her shoulders sagged a bit, clearly relieved. It was another minute before she spoke again. “I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

She let out a long, low breath. “If Yeul can’t do anything...you’ll go in for those tests. The MRI and CAT scan and whatever else.”

“Are you serious?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But what about - ”

“I was thinking about it last night,” she said quickly. “What it comes down to is that...there’s more than one way for us to have a family.” Her eyes flicked towards him again. “But there’s only one you.”

He was quiet for a minute, taking this in, until he reached over the center console and rest his hand on Lightning’s thigh. “ No matter what happens...we’ll be together.”

She just smiled, both of them knowing nothing truer than that.

–--

Noel and Yeul’s house was like something out of an old fairy tale – it was more a cottage than a house, surrounded by a lush green garden and an actual cobblestone path to the door. Though he’d always preferred sleek and modern designs, Hope had to admit that the place was exceptionally charming.

“It’s compensation, I think,” Lightning said when he mentioned this. “Noel and his Yeul were born into a future that wasn’t supposed to happen. Everything was dead and barren and they couldn’t grow anything. Here, though, well...” She gestured to the garden.

“I see.” He recalled how Lightning had mentioned that Noel was the last human born. Yet somehow, he’d made it out of his own time and had managed to have a whole new life. But would he be here now, happy in this new world, if he’d never been born into that future?

Ugh. It made his head spin to think about it. Hope reminded himself to concentrate on his  _own_ problems, at least for the time being.

They walked up to the door and Lightning knocked with three short, sharp raps. A couple of seconds later, the door was opened by a tall, attractive man with longish brown hair. Hope instantly recognized him from the photo album. He was wearing a fitted black shirt, baggy blue pants, and a leather rope necklace with some kind of pendant hanging from it.

“Hey, you guys,” he greeted, stepping aside so they could walk in. “Long time no see. But that’s partially our fault, I guess.”

“No faults about it,” Lightning said. “I wouldn’t mind taking a vacation off the grid someday.”

“I’d definitely recommend it. Yeul and I still have all of our info from the travel place, if you want it.”

Hope noticed Lightning glance at him. “Maybe later,” she said.

“Right.” Noel cleared his throat and gestured at them to go sit down. While he plopped into one of the armchairs, there was a comfortable-looking light blue couch that seemed to beckon Hope. The whole room was done in beautiful colors, actually. It felt safe and inviting in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Once they all sat down, a short girl walked in, the other one from the album that'd always been next to Noel. She was wearing a purple floral-print sundress and several beaded bracelets. Her long, pale hair was partially held back with a clip shaped like a flower.

He had never seen any images of her in the Crystal Age, but the name that'd cropped up over and over in his research left his lips.

“Yeul?”

She smiled warmly. “Hello, Hope.”

Her voice was surprisingly sure and confident, despite the quiet tone. Probably a result of living in this world, he mused. Several tomes he’d come across over the years had mentioned that a seeress was raised in silence to keep her from learning to speak as long as possible – because once she knew the spoken word, the visions would start to come.

He had to remember that she was no longer a seeress here. None of his research applied.

“So it’s true, then?” Noel said when Hope didn’t respond. “You seriously lost your memories?”

“About ten years worth,” Lightning confirmed. “Or a thousand, depending on how you spin it. He just woke up one day thinking we were still the Crystal Age.”

“It’s still weird to think that I’m not,” Hope said. “I mean, I do believe now that this is a memory issue and not a paradox or something of the like. But my mind doesn’t want to seem to catch up.”

“I’m sure it will,” Yeul said. She sat in the other armchair, which was near the spot on the couch where Hope was sitting. “I’ll do what I can to help. The other Yeuls are in the Unseen Realm, and while it has no connection with our world now, sometimes I can feel them if I concentrate.”

“Could they see what happened, then?” Lightning asked.

“Possibly. As you were able to read the timeline, so can they.” Yeul held out her hands. “Your hand, please?”

Hope hesitated for a second before he gently set his palm against Yeul’s. She covered his hand with her other one and closed her eyes, obviously concentrating hard. They remained like that, all four of them in total silence, for almost ten minutes before Yeul finally opened her eyes.

“Yeul?” Noel was watching her with a frown.

“I’m okay,” she assured him, then told Hope, “There is no Chaos around you. Your memory loss is not the result of a paradox.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lightning sag in relief. “But there’s something I’m feeling that I don’t quite understand. It's familiar, yet strange.”

Hope frowned a bit. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure how to explain it.” Yeul let go of his hand, looking thoughtful. “Maybe it would help to tell me everything you remember from the Crystal Age. There could be something in that last night there you recall that could help. Anything at all, no matter how insignificant it seems.”

“Serah said it was 10AF,” Noel said. “And that you hadn’t met me yet.”

“That’s right.” Hope leaned back against the couch. For the past few days, he’d only been thinking about the now and the future he was planning _here._ His memories as a twenty-four year old had taken a backseat because he’d been assuming that the gaps would just get filled in. 

But now, he tried to remember.

“We were in the Yaschas Massif. My team and I,” he continued. “It was constantly dark because of an eclipse brought on by a fal’cie.”

“I forgot about that,” Noel said. “Could that have something to do with it?”

“The eclipse was a paradox that you and Serah resolved,” Lightning pointed out. “And it was _meant_ to be resolved to correct the timeline. We wouldn’t be here right now if something else had happened.”

_Chaos theory,_ Hope thought, but didn’t say as much. Instead he continued, “We’d just discovered an Oracle Drive and were planning on viewing it the next day, when more of the team was supposed to arrive. I held it in my office.”

“You didn’t view it?” Yeul asked.

“No.”

“Hmm.” She tilted her head. “Go on.”

“I drank some coffee because I wanted to stay up a little and get more work done,” he continued, the details coming back now. “I’d gotten through a bunch of paperwork. I think I had more coffee. And then...” His brow furrowed. “I heard a noise.”

“A noise?”

“Yes.” The moment was fuzzy, but it was slowly coming back. “It wasn’t anything threatening, it just sounded...different. I can’t quite explain it. I don’t even really remember it, but it eventually led me to a structure that I was told was a time gate – like the one you and Serah were supposed to use,” he said, nodding towards Noel. “The gate was inactive, but there was something glowing and floating beside it that was making the noise.”

“Floating?” Noel was literally on the edge of his seat. “Did it have an odd shape?”

“Yeah!” He could see it a little more clearly now. “It wasn’t like any of the other artefacts we’d discovered, but I thought it might be important.”

“What did you do with it?” Yeul asked.

“I brought it back to my office,” Hope said. “I set it next to the Oracle Drive.”

“...Next to it?” Yeul frowned ever-so-slightly.

“Yes...” Hope trailed off, going quiet when nobody spoke until he had to ask. “What? What does that mean?”

“The floaty thing was an artefact that opened the time gate,” Noel explained, leaning back in his chair again. “Serah and I collected them as we traveled around so we could get to different eras. Usually we found them in different eras or near the gates. She and I were typically the only ones that handled them.”

“I see.” He didn’t, not really. “But obviously I’m not the one who was able to use it.”

“That artefact likely opened a gate that led to a point far into the future,” Yeul said. “And the Oracle Drive _shows_ the future. If they come into close proximity, it could have a devastating affect.”

Silence. Dead silence.

“But that’s impossible,” Noel blurted out. “Serah and I were able to _use_ that artefact to fix the paradox, the eclipse.” 

“You used it for the gate,” Yeul said. “The energy it gave off was not just for one purpose.”

Hope honestly had no idea what to think. He leaned back against the couch in a daze and almost hesitantly looked at Lightning. She had a completely stunned expression on her face, like she literally could not  _believe_ what she was hearing. 

Totally relatable.

“So...” Hope eventually croaked out, “this _is_ a paradox?”

“No,” Yeul assured him. “If it were, Noel – and likely Serah – would have memories of trying to fix such a thing.” She looked at Noel. “But the paradox you fixed was the eclipse, yes?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Serah and I remembered it, but nobody else did.”

“So what’s going on?” Lightning finally blurted out impatiently. “There are no paradoxes or magic or anything like that in this world. How could something that happened in the Crystal Age be affecting him now?!”

“I’m not sure what you’d call it,” Yeul said thoughtfully. “But I believe Hope’s memory loss now is a result of him being near the energy of that artefact and the Oracle Drive at the same time. It’s simply not meant to combine or be in proximity of each other. Time and space are fickle things.” 

“And?” Hope urged.

“Because the energy was so focused on the future, that’s where it went. And since the artefact was meant for _travel,_ well, it traveled to a future that it knew would come to pass. That energy came through thousands of years and a whole different world, only to finally affect you now.”

He tried to get this right, but it was difficult. “So it’s like a signal,” he said, mostly to himself. “It’s just been traveling all this time and finally got to me.”

“That’s right,” Yeul said.

“But why memory loss?”

“Perhaps it was because the energy wasn’t a part of everything you experienced. It simply traveled. And when it got to you here, it still was still in the form it had been from that time in the Crystal Age.”

“I've been remembering things, though,” Hope said. Lightning's birthday. That nightmare. Touching her.

Yeul shrugged. “Energy like that is imperfect when it collides with something as complex as a human mind.”

“This is insane,” Lightning said. “Are you telling me that something he did in another world a thousand years ago would really affect him _now?”_

“It’s the most plausible reason.” Yeul folded her hands on her lap. “The artefacts that were used to unlock the gates were extremely powerful. Most people did not quite grasp how much, since they were only meant for use by certain people.”

“Me and Serah,” Noel said.

Yeul nodded and addressed Hope. “It’s extremely likely that no one noticed anything odd back then and things continued as normal. It’s not something any of my previous incarnations likely could have predicted, either. Things just happened to work out this way. No one could have known.”

Despite that, Hope felt weirdly guilty. Yes, he couldn’t have known any of this, that the energy from the artefact and the Oracle Drive would have such far-reaching affects. Literally.

But it _had_ been him that found the artefact and _he_ was the one who kept it in his office. Even if it was a crazy happenstance that no one could have foreseen, he was the one who caused it.

Lightning reached over and rest her hand on his arm in a comforting gesture. He relaxed slightly, leaning in to her a bit.

“I guess the main question now is...is there any way to fix this?” he asked.

When Yeul didn’t answer right away, his heart sank. It was Noel that suddenly said, “The book, maybe?”

“Oh!” Yeul clasped her fingers together in a sort of prayer gesture. “That’s right. I’d nearly forgotten about it. Should I go find it?”

“I’ll get it.” Noel got up and kissed the top of Yeul’s head as he passed her, to which she smiled. Hope and Lightning just stared, and he knew this had to be odd if _she_ was confused too.

“Book?” he finally dared to ask.

“Yes.” Yeul set her hands in her lap again. “When we arrived in this world, many more people recalled the Crystal Age than they do now. So I recorded their memories – a sort of written Oracle Drive of the past, I suppose.”

“I see.” Normally Hope would have actually been extremely interested in such a thing, but now he only wanted one answer. “Is there something in there that will be able to help?”

“I believe so. Among the things I wrote and was told, several were recipes for Potions and the like.”

He remembered the day he woke up here and how asking for a Potion was what made Lightning realize something was wrong. “You think a Potion will fix this?”

“No,” Yeul said. “An Elixir. Quite rare, if I recall, but they cure any malady. And having something that’s from the old world but made _here_ in _this_ world may cause the energy that’s responsible for your memory loss to sort of realize what it’s doing and balance itself out.”

“Hmm.” While Hope didn’t really like the way Yeul talked about this energy, as though it were a bug or a worm that was lodged in his mind like some physical being, he was somehow inclined to believe her. Maybe Lightning’s hand on his arm gave him the courage, as silly as that sounded in his head.

Or maybe, at this point, he was just willing to try anything.

“Here we go.” Noel reappeared carrying a large book that was bound in what looked like leather. He set it down in front of Yeul. “Let’s hope this helps.”

“I’m sure it will,” Yeul said. Hope and Lightning said nothing.

He remembered using an Elixir maybe once in his life, because Yeul was right – they’d been absurdly rare and expensive, something only to be used in the most dire emergencies. Perhaps that was why she was sure it would work now, because this very much _was_ a dire emergency.

There was an actual recipe written in a neat, flowing script. Noel got out a piece of paper so Yeul could copy it down.

“It’s very important that this is followed _exactly,_ ” she said. “Taking any shortcuts may compromise its use.”

“I’ve never been a big believer in shortcuts, anyway,” Hope said. He took the paper, moving it a little when Lightning leaned in to look at it so she could see better. Some of the ingredients seemed familiar – chamomile, thyme, carbonated water – but others stumped him. Glowing nettle? Ember flowers? It felt like he needed to go back to the Crystal Age for half the ingredients.

“You’ll be able to find everything,” Yeul assured him. “It just may take a bit of hunting.”

“Right,” Lightning murmured, scanning the list again. She seemed uncomfortable for some reason, and he found out why when she asked, “Why haven’t you told any of us that you had that?” She gestured to the book. “Besides our memories, it’s the only proof the Crystal Age existed. If anyone got their hands on it...”

“I learned a lot from my previous incarnations,” Yeul said in her quiet voice, but there was something in her tone that just demanded to be listened to. “Humanity has gone through countless hardships. While this world is different and has no god to toy with us, humans remain much the same. And if we do not remember our history, then we will always be doomed to repeat it on some level.” She spread her fingers over the cover of the book. “This isn’t much, but perhaps someday, it will show others the way.”

Lightning didn’t seem particularly enthused with this answer, but she simply nodded and didn’t push further. Hope reached for her hand and gave it a little squeeze, still scanning the Elixir recipe.

“How come I need to take this at night?” he asked.

“It may have a powerful sedative effect,” Yeul explained. “That’s simply due to the way the ingredients work in this world.”

“And I’ll have my memories back when I wake up?”

“When you wake up, all will be as it should.”

Hope squeezed Lightning’s hand again and smiled at her. However long it took to find these ingredients, he knew they’d do it together. They were going to fix this.

He was going to get his life back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....welp 8D;;
> 
> I am unashamed to admit that this explanation and tbh the thought that sparked this whole fic was inspired by that Futurama episode where the Omicronians are watching that Single Female Lawyer episode that got cut off because Fry spilled beer a thousand years ago......amazing what can make inspiration go lmao
> 
> also chamomile, thyme, and carbonated water are real ingredients in the Elixir energy drinks that Squenix released a loooong time ago to celebrate the release of FFXIII, so that seemed appropriate ;D
> 
> thank you as always for your comments~


	14. Chapter 14

As it turned out, it was easy to order a lot of the ingredients for the Elixir over the internet. Hope was very much used to buying things with a click of a button when he’d been a kid, but it’d been many years since he’d been able to enjoy such a convenience. Or at least, in his mind it had been.

Ugh, he couldn’t wait until things were back to normal. Even though he’d accepted that _this_ was where he was supposed to be, it was still hard not to think of himself as a twenty-four year old who was due back to his camp at the Yaschas Massif.

For some reason, Lightning didn’t seem as confident about the Elixir. He asked her about it the next day as they bought some glowing nettle, having paid an exuberant amount for overnight shipping.

“I trust Yeul,” she said. “And I trust that I know what she’s talking about. But this seems...I don’t know, almost a little _too_ easy.” She sighed. “I’ve been hoping that one day we’ll wake up and you’ll be back to normal. And now that that might actually happen...”

“It does seem a little unbelievable,” he agreed. “A part of me has gotten used to not having the same memories as everyone else. To think that I may very well have them again is...insane.”

“Maybe I’m just being negative, but I guess I’m just trying not to get my hopes up.” She sighed again, this one much heavier.

Hope tugged her close and pulled her into a tight hug that she fell into, so easily like she was meant to be right there. He kissed the top of her head. “Maybe keep a little bit of hope,” he said.

“I always do.” She squeezed her arms around him. “I have you.”

–--

All of the ingredients were at his disposal a few days later. It would take a few hours to brew correctly, so he started making it late afternoon, double, triple, quadruple-checking the instructions. He had to admit, he felt right in his element, with what all the measuring and checking. Lighting seemed amused by this, which was definitely preferable to her doubt.

Maybe it was finally hitting her that tomorrow, things would be back to normal.

“I don’t remember Elixirs smelling like this,” she said at one point and waved a hand in front of her nose.

“I have to filter it and gradually add the ember flower,” he said. “Maybe that’ll do something.”

Lightning raised an eyebrow. “You’d better hope for the sake of your taste buds it does.”

“Small price to pay.” He strained the concoction into a filter, watching it drip through. It would take a few minutes to finish, so in the meantime, he turned to Lightning and slid his arms around her, eagerly pulling her close.

She in turn looped her arms around his neck, watching his face for a moment. “How are you feeling?”

Trust her to always hit the nail on the head. “I’m...” He glanced at the filter, watching it drip some more. “...I’m nervous,” he finally had to admit. “It’s strange, but I keep wondering if I’ll remember this.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Not my missing memories, but _this.”_ He kind of gestured aimlessly. “This whole experience. Will I wake up and remember that I forgot? Or will it be like nothing happened and I just lost a few weeks?”

She tilted her head. “Why does it matter?”

“I don’t want to lose any time with you,” he said quietly, leaning in to press his forehead against hers. “What I have here is so precious. _You_ are precious to me. It’s amazing that there was ever a time that I wondered about you every day, if you were safe or even alive. And now you’re here whenever I need you. I don’t want to lose a moment.”

“Better a few weeks than hundreds of years,” she murmured. “But I can see what you mean.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm.” She toyed with the hair at the nape of his neck, which was ridiculously distracting. “If you do forget, I’ll be right here to remind you.”

Suddenly Hope couldn’t wait to get his memories back even more than usual – he wanted to remember, from his point of view, what it was like to save Lightning and see her for the first time in this new world.

He wanted to recall what it was like to fall in love with her all over again.

“I know that I'll remember anyway,” he said, “but tell me a memory you have of us. A good one, so that I can look forward to recalling it when I wake up.”

“Hmmm...” The fingers in his hair slowed a bit as a thoughtful look came across her face. Eventually, she smiled at the corners of her lips. “How about something that really convinced me that I wanted a family with you?”

His heart thudded. “Yeah?”

“We had to watch Rosa once for a few days,” Lightning said. “She stayed here and you took most of that time off from work, which was nice. I know she loves me, but it's nothing compared to how obsessed she is with you.”

“At least I didn't scare her off when we saw them all a few days ago.”

“As if you could.” She smirked a little. “But she insisted on you tucking her in every night. I usually just left you to it, but about...I don't know, I think maybe the last night she was there, I was passing by the other room and I heard you telling her a story.”

“I was?” Hope had never thought of himself as much of a storyteller. Maybe Lightning had misspoken and he'd been reading one instead.

Apparently not, because Lightning continued, “Yes. You were telling her a story about the Crystal Age.”

His hands, which had been randomly tracing circles on the small of her back, suddenly paused. The Crystal Age? He couldn't think of anything – that he remembered, anyway – that had happened that would've been an appropriate bedtime story for a child. “Seriously?”

“You put your own little spin on it,” she assured him. “You basically made me out to be this kind of superhero goddess and you were a man of science and we went on adventures with all of our friends.”

He chuckled and shook his head a bit. “I can't imagine coming up with anything like that. I'm not exactly the most creative person in the world.”

“It's easy when you're doing it for someone you love, though,” she pointed out. “And you'd do anything for Rosa.”

Gods, he couldn't wait to get those memories back. Hope had definitely felt a kind of kinship with her that night at Serah and Snow's, but that intense love had been clouded by his memory loss. He just wanted everything back to normal already. “I guess you're right.”

“That night, I stood outside the door and listened.” Lightning actually sounded a bit shy at admitting that, which made him think that he hadn't known about her eavesdropping before. “And after you told the story, you said...” She trailed off and swallowed, closing her eyes before she murmured, “'This is a legend, from before you were born'.”

For some reason, the words sent a shiver down his spine, but not in an entirely bad way. It was more like they nagged at him from behind the blank space of his memories.

The Elixir had to work. It _had_ to.

“So me telling Rosa some bedtime stories convinced you that you wanted a family with me?”

“I think it was the idea that you could take something that, for the most part, had been pretty dramatic and terrifying and spin it in a way that made it seem better,” Lightning mused. “You know that we – Serah and Snow and the others – are the only ones who have any real memories of the Crystal Age. I know Yeul said a lot more people remembered it at first, but of course it faded quickly for them. But now because of you, Rosa can know about it in a way that makes more sense for this world. It's a part of her history too, even if she never realizes it.”

Hope ignored the little knot that'd formed in his stomach. Not having those memories – _all_ of them – was more heartbreaking than he ever would have thought. He remembered Lightning's story about what had happened in the Crystal Age and knew that her words were the bare bones of it. So much had happened that he needed to remember. Sure, people could tell him stories, but it would never compare to having his _own_ memories of it.

“It's a part of all of us,” he said quietly. “I want to remember my part.”

“You will,” she murmured. “Even if this doesn't work, we'll find another way.”

He kissed her, a sweet peck that she immediately deepened with a mutual sigh _._ His hands slipped under her shirt and gently traced her bare back, unable to help but moan into the kiss when she arched into his touch.

“You’d better check on the Elixir,” she said in a low voice a few minutes later. It took him a minute to remember what the heck she was talking about – her lips always left him so dazed – but he eventually hummed in agreement and kissed her forehead before getting back to his ingredients.

They really were so perfect together.

Adding in the ember flowers surprisingly made the whole concoction turn a bright green, which was the color he remembered Elixirs being. That had to be a good sign, he thought.

When he’d followed the last of the instructions and the Elixir was ready, he poured it into an old water bottle. For a long moment, he and Lightning stared at the glowing green liquid.

“I guess it’s now or never,” he said. His stomach felt jumpy and nervous, maybe from the anticipation.

“Come on.” She tugged on his hand and he was momentarily confused as she led him to the bedroom, but then remembered the sedative effect. It was beyond weird getting ready for bed like everything wasn’t totally hinging on this.

Even though it was earlier than they usually turned in, Lightning climbed into bed with him. He grabbed the bottle and stared at it some more. What would tomorrow bring? Would things go back to normal? Would even remember if they _hadn’t_ been normal?

“Hope?”

“Sorry,” he blurted out. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous.”

She was quiet before answering. “Maybe it’s because it’s a change, at least in your mind. Even if it’s something you want, it’s still a lot to deal with.”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “But I guess at some point, I need to just jump in.” He looked at her. “Some things in life you just do.”

Her smile was so sweet and loving that it seemed impossible that he’d ever gone a time in his life without seeing it. “And no matter what happens, I’ve always got your back.” She smoothed his hair back and kissed him. “Whether this works or not, we’ll be together. That will never change.”

“We’ll be together,” he echoed, punctuating his words with another kiss.

He was ready.

Hope took the Elixir and tipped his head back, trying to swallow it all in one go. It went down easily, but the grimace on his face said it all about the taste.

Lightning raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”

“It’s extremely bitter,” he replied. “But that’s how I remember an Elixir tasting, so I just...” He blinked a couple of times as the room began to spin. “Oh, wow.”

“Here.” She gently eased him back onto his pillows. “Don’t worry about staying awake, okay? I’ll be right here.”

“Light,” he murmured sleepily, relaxing a thousand times more when she began to stroke his hair. “Everything’s gonna be fine, right?”

“Yes.” She kissed his forehead. “Just sleep.”

“Okay.” It was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open, so he slowly closed them. The last thing he saw was Lightning’s soft expression. “Love you.”

“I love you too, Hope.”

Everything drifted and his world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter plus the epilogue to go :')
> 
> thank you as always for your comments c:

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://rainbowserenity.tumblr.com/) if you wanna say hey~


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